








m 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

The Story of his Life 




T~ts, /A 



<g^^ — ^^v, 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
THE STORY OF HIS LIFE 



BY 

MARY THACHER HIGGINSON 

(i 

WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER 
ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1914 






COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY MARY THACHER HIGGINSON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published March IQ14 



MAR 23 1914 

GI.A-8621 






PREFACE 

The preparation of a volume which should tell 
briefly and simply the story of Colonel Higginson's 
life, and as nearly as possible in his own words, has 
involved examining and sifting a great mass of 
manuscripts. Happily he shared with his contem- 
poraries a reluctance, not felt by the present gener- 
ation, to destroy letters, journals, or memoranda. 
To those who have assisted my difficult task by the 
loan of letters and the contribution of personal 
memories, cordial thanks are due ; and no less to the 
unknown friends who have written to signify their 
interest and say Godspeed. Let me also express 
warm gratitude to those literary friends of Colonel 
Higginson whose^ sympathy, advice, and criticism 

have been invaluable. 

M. T. H. 



CONTENTS 

I. Inheritance i 

II. An Old-Fashioned Home 10 

III. The Boy Student 23 

IV. The Young Pedagogue 41 

V. The Call to preach 55 

VI. In and out of the Pulpit 84 

VII. The Free Church 117 

VIII. Anthony Burns and the Underground Rail- 
way 142 

IX. The Atlantic Essays .155 

X. A Ride through Kansas 166 

XI. John Brown and the Call to Arms . .190 
XII. The Black Regiment 215 

XIII. Oldport Days 253 

XIV. Return to Cambridge 292 

XV. Journeys 322 

XVI. The Crowning Years 368 

Bibliography 403 

Index 429 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Photogravure) Frontispiece \s 

From a photograph by Purdy, 1903 

Captain Thomas Storrow, i 755-1 795 2 

From a miniature 

Thomas Wentworth Storrow, 1 779-1 862 6 

From a painting 

Stephen Higginson, Father of T. W. Higginson, 1 770-1 834 16 

From the portrait in the Harvard Divinity School 

Birthplace of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Kirkland 
Street, Cambridge 30 

Mrs. Stephen Higginson (Louisa Storrow) . . . . 46 v^ 

From a miniature 

Anne Storrow (Aunt Nancy) 58 V* 

From a daguerreotype 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson at the age of twenty-three 84 

From a daguerreotype taken in 1846 

Lucy Stone 136 

After a daguerreotype taken in 1855 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson 180 u 

From a photograph taken at Worcester in 1857 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson 216 v 

As Colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers. From a photograph taken 
in 1862 

Henry Williams, First Sergeant of the First South Caro- 
lina Volunteers .... * 234 

From a tintype 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson 262 

From a photograph taken at Newport in 1865 



x ILLUSTRATIONS 

The House on Buckingham Street, Cambridge . . . 298 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and his daughter Margaret 304 

From a photograph taken in 1885 

The House in Dublin, N.H 374 

The Grandchildren, Wentworth Higginson Barney, Mar- 
garet Dellinger Barney 394 

From a photograph taken in 1909 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



Thomas Wentworth Higginson 



INHERITANCE 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson came from a race 
of large-minded, free-handed men. Beginning with 
the Reverend Francis Higginson, of Puritan fame, 
and coming down through the line of his descend- 
ants, we see a striking repetition of certain traits 
and habits. Confining ourselves, for instance, to the 
successive Stephen Higginsons, born in Salem, — 
Wentworth Higginson's father, grandfather, and 
great-grandfather, — we find them all upright and 
fearless, actively interested in the general welfare, 
leaders in public affairs, and extending a ready and 
never empty hand to the unfortunate. They were 
bred to mercantile life, and two of the three met 
with various reverses in fortune, which never embit- 
tered their lives or made them less philanthropic. 

Stephen, the grandfather, having married at the 
age of twenty, and finding his income not sufficient 
for family needs, embarked upon the seas, command- 
ing one of his father's ships at twenty-one. He con- 
tinued "a bold and successful shipmaster" until the 



2 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

breaking-out of the Revolution, and later was a 
member of the Continental Congress and high in 
councils of state. He anticipated the literary skill of 
his grandson Wentworth, for he wrote for the pub- 
lic press, wielding a vigorous pen in defence of his 
political opinions. He was dimly remembered by 
his grandson as a dignified and benignant figure 
in smallclothes. His son, Stephen Higginson, Jr., 
Wentworth's father, was a successful Boston mer- 
chant until Jefferson's embargo deprived him of 
wealth. He was called the "Man of Ross" from 
his great philanthropy, this name having been 
given to a benevolent English worthy celebrated 
by Pope. He was prominent in civic affairs and 
was one of the original trustees of the Massachu- 
setts General Hospital. His grave is in the old 
burying-ground on Boston Common, marked by 
the inscription, "In works of Love he found his 
happiness." 

These family traits were bequeathed to Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson and were in no way weakened 
by the transmission. Combined with these was an 
ardent love of adventure, which may be traced in a 
degree to his sailor grandfather, but more directly to 
the grandparents on his mother's side. The career 
of his maternal grandfather, Captain Thomas Stor- 
row of the British army, and his American wife, 




CAPTAIN THOMAS STORROW, 1 755-1795 



INHERITANCE 3 

reads like a thrilling romance. The "Grenadier," 
as he has been nicknamed in the family, seems to 
have been a "gay, reckless" fellow who managed 
to make away with his worldly possessions in early 
youth, partly by generously endowing his brother 
and sisters. He was on his way to England from 
Jamaica in 1777 in a vessel which was captured by 
a Massachusetts privateer; and the young officer 
of twenty- two was landed as prisoner-of-war at 
Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Here in "Tory 
circles," says the chronicle, he fell in love with the 
beautiful Anne Appleton, great-granddaughter of 
John Wentworth, first royal governor of New Hamp- 
shire. Captain Storrow was presently exchanged, 
and in spite of the bitter opposition of both families 
married this lovely girl of seventeen and carried her 
off to England to his "cold and stately" mother. 
That disappointed dame, having planned a match 
for her improvident son with an heiress whose es- 
tate "marched with" her own, had no fancy for a 
penniless American bride. The chilly atmosphere 
of this English home soon drove forth the pleasure- 
loving captain, and the homesick child-wife beguiled 
her solitary hours, both here and in other lonely 
places in which she was stranded in later years, by 
reading and study. Life for this wandering couple 
was a constant kaleidoscope. At one time, Mrs. 



4 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Storrow was the centre of attraction in the gay 
and corrupt society of Halifax where her cousin, 
Sir John Wentworth, was high in power; and again 
she was undergoing great suffering and hardship 
imposed by the fortunes of war. That she was a 
spirited lady we may judge from a letter to her 
sister, in which she speaks thus of a certain arbitrary 
brother in whose house she had been staying: "I 
had rather live with a Hottentot just escaped from 
the Caff res coast !" 

Another instance of this quality occurred after 
the couple had made their home on the island of 
Campobello in the Bay of Fundy, which " the Grena- 
dier ' ' and his brother-in-law had purchased. It hap- 
pened that Mrs. Storrow was once left alone with 
her little children, when a notice was suddenly served 
on her that she must leave the island immediately, 
as it had been sold to them under a false title. She 
w T as at once ejected from her house. "The Grena- 
dier's" wife then rose up in her wrath and expressed 
her indignation in such forcible terms that her per- 
secutors succumbed to her eloquence — restored 
her cattle, and allowed her to remain temporarily 
in the house. Her husband, to do him justice, was 
always her ardent lover, and his dying words were, 
"Nancy, you are an angel!" 

The first son born to the Storrows was Thomas 



INHERITANCE 5 

Wentworth, for whom the subject of this memoir 
was named. The second daughter, Louisa, mother of 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, inherited the strong 
character and sound common sense with the grace 
and charm of Anne Appleton. Left an orphan at an 
early age, she was received as an adopted daughter 
into the family of Stephen Higginson. She wrote in 
1832, recalling her early life: 

"When I was fourteen years of age, he [Mr. Hig- 
ginson] returned from Europe, and I shall never for- 
get the first meeting I had with him — he was then 
about thirty — in the prime of his beauty, which 
was then exceeding — full of youthful ardor and 
flushed with success — he . . . had been eminently 
successful in his commercial Speculations and he 
returned from England laden with the comforts and 
luxuries of that land of ease — he introduced a 
degree of elegance into his own establishment which 
was then unknown and abounded in all that could 
adorn or embellish life." 

At nineteen, this young girl became his second wife, 
and stepmother to his two children. Ten children 
were born of this marriage, of whom Wentworth was 
the youngest. 

An all-important factor in this household was 
Mrs. Higginson's older sister, Anne, who was uni- 
versally beloved and respected in the community, 
being commonly known as Aunt Nancy. Wentworth 



6 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Higginson always spoke of her affectionately as "the 
aunt who brought me up." On her seventieth birth- 
day, he wrote her, "You seem to me no older than 
when I used to play with blocks upon the floor of our 
common chamber, or when you assisted me to insert 
myself for the first time in nankeen inexpressibles.' ' 

Professor Charles Eliot Norton, in a letter to 
Colonel Higginson in 1904, says of these sisters: 
"They [your friendly words] bring to mind my 
Mother's affection for your Mother, and for Aunt 
Nancy, who was as dear an Aunt to us children at 
Shady Hill as she was to you and your brothers and 
sisters. What dear and admirable women! What 
simple, happy lives they led!" 

In their days of prosperity, the Higginsons exer- 
cised a lavish hospitality. Mrs. Higginson adapted 
herself readily, however, to changed fortunes, and 
in the companionship of her children, a large circle of 
friends, and many books, she passed a serene and 
contented life. She was a deeply religious woman 
and bore with fortitude the sorrows that came to her, 
the most bitter of which was the fate of her son 
Thacher. This youth, whom Wentworth Higginson 
called his "gayest and most frolicsome" brother, 
went on a voyage to South America and the ship 
was never heard from. It was the mother's custom 
to retreat every evening about sunset to a certain 




THOMAS WENTWORTH STORROW, I779-1862 



INHERITANCE 7 

window to write in her daily journal for her absent 
son. Not for many years did she give up all hope of 
his return, nor cease burning a nightly beacon. 

It would seem that those days must have been 
longer than ours when we read of Mrs. Higginson's 
daily doings. Not only did she care for a large house- 
hold, entertain a great variety of visitors, walk from 
Cambridge to Boston to make calls or do errands, 
but withal she accomplished a vast amount of valu- 
able reading. Of his mother, Colonel Higginson 
always spoke with the most tender and reverent 
affection. In an article of his called "The Woman 
Who Most Influenced Me" he says: — 

"In all the vicissitudes of a reformer's career, I 
cannot recall anything but encouragement on her 
part. ... I have thus traced to my mother's direct 
influence three leading motives of her youngest son's 
life — the love of personal liberty, of religious free- 
dom, and of the equality of the sexes. . . . Life 
brought her many cares and sorrows; but it never 
brought the saddest of all its griefs, disenchantment." 

Unfortunately, Wentworth's recollections of his 
father were vague. He notes in his college journal at 
the end of his freshman year, among other "Remi- 
niscences of Life" : " My excellent father died Feb'y 
20th, 1834. I was unfortunately too young at that 
time to feel my loss much." But he took great pride 



8 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

in his father's useful life and especially in his close 
connection with the university ; for not long after his 
financial misfortunes, Stephen Higginson was called 
from Bolton, where he had temporarily removed his 
family, to Cambridge to become the steward or bur- 
sar of Harvard College. He was deeply interested 
in Unitarianism and organized the Harvard Divinity 
School. His personal interest in the Harvard under- 
graduates of his day is shown by letters written to 
him by those who had gone to Germany to continue 
their studies, one of these being Edward Everett. 
In a poem read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 
June, 1904, Colonel Higginson thus spoke of his 
father: — 

"He planned a path to each professor's door 
And placed a gate at every footpath's end; 
Above each gate he hung a lantern o'er 
To which each pair of learned feet might tend. 

"He planted elms, but then there came a frown, 
And stern economy soon cast a blight. 
The frugal college took the lanterns down, 
IBut left the trees to flourish as they might." 

Itivas probably during the family's stay in Bolton 
that their acquaintance was made with Wentworth's 
future nurse, Rowena Houghton, who left the Hig- 
ginson service to become the wife of Dexter Pratt, 
Longfellow's village blacksmith. From the Bolton 
farmhouse came the old leather fire-bucket which 



INHERITANCE 9 

Colonel Higginson purchased and hung in his Cam- 
bridge home. It had been painted white, but the 
removal of the paint brought to light the name 
"Stephen Higginson, Jr.," and near the top of the 
bucket the phrase, "In suis non fallitur. 1841." 

The house which the college built for Stephen Hig- 
ginson on Kirkland Street, Cambridge, then called 
"Professors' Row," still stands; and here, on one of 
the shortest days of the year, Thomas Wentworth 
Storrow Higginson began his eventful life. To use 
his own words, " I was born on the 22nd of December, 
1823, and had my proud birthright wrested from me 
when the change of dates landed the Pilgrims on 
December 23." 



II 

AN OLD-FASHIONED HOME 

It is a curious fact, considering his vigorous man- 
hood, that the infant Wentworth was at one time 
delicate, and according to family belief was kept 
alive by the juices of chicken bones. In after years, 
Mrs. Higginson wrote this letter, December 26, 
1861: — 

" Your birthday was remembered and honored by 
gratitude and praise, remembering as I did the poor 
half dead baby that I had for so long walked about 
in my arms and fed religiously according to direction 
every two hours, bearing hope in my heart when there 
seemed no hope, and even the most experienced 
doctors gave him up; how could I be but grateful 
and exultant when I think of my stalwart son, the 
Day Star of my Life! " 

"Too many babies" is the concise label with 
which Wentworth, the man, indorsed a letter written 
by his Aunt Nancy in 1824, in which she says: — 

"I believe I have not written you since the birth 
of our young Thomas Wentworth. I meant to have 
announced to you the arrival of the Stout Gentle- 
man. . . . Our Wentworth grows such a mountain — 
that we think sometimes it would be well to ask Mr. 



AN OLD-FASHIONED HOME n 

Perkins to invent some kind of a steam-engine where- 
by to tend him this summer — for we have some 
misgivings concerning the strength of our arms. . . . 
Oh, dear! if this would only be the last blessing of 
the sort which was to fall to our happy lot. Surely 
we ought to be resigned — even if our hard fate 
should condemn us to count only eleven [living] 
children.' ' 

A quaint relic of those days survives in the shape 
of an old English mahogany washstand, containing a 
tiny concealed tub in which the Higginson babies 
were bathed. This extraordinary tub is drawn out 
by brass handles like a drawer, and with it come the 
supporting legs. All the children who grew up under 
the influence of their faithful Aunt Nancy did her 
credit. Francis became a physician, but was too gen- 
erous and tender-hearted to make a worldly success. 
Stephen was a merchant, and the only one of the 
flock who had a large family of his own. He was in 
South America during most of Wentworth's child- 
hood, but wrote charming letters addressed to " Bro. 
S.'s little man." Waldo, whom the irrepressible 
Thacher called a "thunderm* dandy/ ' was the soul 
of honor and chivalry, although his brave life was 
partially crippled by paralysis. Neither of the two 
sisters was married. Louisa, brilliant, accomplished, 
and considered the genius of the family, became — 



12 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

for a time — a Roman Catholic. Learning, however, 
that according to the belief of the Church her Protes- 
tant mother could not be ultimately " saved," she, 
to use her own words, "saw the door open and 
walked out." Anna, the self-effacing, domestic sis- 
ter, outlived most of the others. 

The pet of the Higginson family was — naturally 
— little Tommy as he was then called. Soon he was 
only known as Wentworth, and the S tor row was 
dropped. Our earliest glimpses of him are found 
in his mother's diary. They show how the child 
foreshadowed the man and also reveal the happy 
home in which he was reared. Indeed, we can almost 
breathe the atmosphere of that home when we read 
such sentences as these: "A large Damask rose bush 
sends its fragrance into one of our parlour windows 
and the yellow sweet briar waves its long wreaths into 
the other. . . . We read and work and walk and play 
and study German and laugh and talk and then 
there is nothing but smiles and sunshine to be seen." 

When Wentworth was not quite four, he went to a 
Dame School kept by a Miss Jennison. He also went 
to dancing-school in a private house. His mother 
writes : — 

"We . . . have been quietly seated at our work . . . 
only interrupted by little Wentworth's rampant 
spirits before he went to bed. He spells to me every 



AN ^OLD-FASHIONED HOME 13 

night in sister's little book. Last night he read ' God 
Reigns/ He looked up at me and asked, 'What does 
God do with the reins ?'" 

At bedtime, one night, he announced, "Now I am 
going to d'eam something proper funny." Thus 
early began his lifelong interest in dreams. 

Again she writes : — 

"A very quiet happy day though a storm, engaged 
in making my little boy's clothes all day, while he 
[has been] by my side, reading or playing ... he has 
been part of the time catching fish 'in 'ahant 
[Nahant].' . . . Between daylight and dark he plays 
Waldo is his Custard Pudding, and after beating and 
stuffing him, he roasts him in the oven; then after 
supper he takes his books. . . . 

"We have been highly amused with Wentworth 
to-night ... he [said he] could draw the 'Possum 
up the gum tree' ... he made some marks on the 
paper and then showed them to me saying as he 
pointed, ' there 's the possum up the gum tree, there 's 
the raccoon in the hollow, there 's catch-him-up-my- 
boy, there's give-him-half-a-dollar ' ; this indication 
of genius excited universal acclamation." 

The maternal chronicle does not relate the story 
that Colonel Higginson enjoyed telling about one of 
his childhood's books which contained a rather too 
vivid description of a wolf's cave. The careful 
mamma had pasted strips of paper over the objec- 



14 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

tionable parts, but Master Wentworth succeeded in 
removing these precautions and the lurid words 
remained forever fixed in his memory. 

One of his methodical habits was to make lists of 
his possessions, his friends, or his achievements. 
One cold winter night, when his brothers were won- 
dering where an extra blanket could be found, one of 
them cried, "Ask Wentworth. He probably has a 
list of blankets in his pocket!" 

The older brothers, Thacher and Waldo, went to a 
boy's school kept by William Wells, an Englishman, 
in an old colonial house, still to be seen on Brattle 
Street (then Tory Row), Cambridge. To this 
school Wentworth was promoted at the age of eight, 
and there he remained for five years, until he was 
fitted for college. His acquaintance with James 
Russell Lowell began here, the latter being one of the 
older pupils. There is an amusing letter from Lowell 
to Thacher Higginson which Colonel Higginson 
later framed and hung in his library. 

"My dear Thach, — 

"In the course of human events when the mind 
becomes indued with active spirit, with powerful 
imagination, with extensive enterprise, with noble 
designty — Then, my boy, Then! is the time to 
return to you this — Sallust. 

"Yrs. 

"J. R. L." 



AN OLD-FASHIONED HOME [ 15 

The first sight of " Jimmy Lowell " made a lifelong 
impression on the younger boy's mind as the former 
came galloping to school on a little white pony, 
although he lived only a few rods distant. Went- 
worth's own home was a mile away, and he often 
dined at the school. Afterward he recalled with 
amusement the fact that the old custom of serving 
pudding before meat lingered there. Athletic sports, 
as well as the humanities, were warmly encouraged 
by Mr. Wells, and the afternoons spent in cricket, 
football, and skating on Fresh Pond were always 
remembered with boyish glee. After leaving the 
school, his brother Waldo wrote thus to the younger 
boy about Mr. Wells: — 

"There are few men that I like better, and I came 
to this state of feelings through some hard floggings, 
which I am glad your better behaved shoulders have 
escaped.' ' 

When Wentworth was nine, his mother recorded 
that he had read a great many books and was 
especially fond of natural history. A year later, she 
added that he had mastered the Latin grammar. 
The following summary of Wentworth's virtues 
from the same, perhaps not unbiased, source, may 
well bring the maternal records to an end: — 

"He has genuine refinement and delicacy, with 
manliness and power of controlling himself and a 



16 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 

sense of right, governing his thoughts and actions — 
which command my respect as much as if he was a 
grown man. ... I never [saw] one who was more 
thoughtful and considerate of others — though he 
has been the youngest and an object of uncommon 
interest." 

The old habit of preserving family correspond- 
ence was never abandoned by Colonel Higginson. 
These little letters were written between the boy's 
tenth and thirteenth years in a round clear script: — 

"Dear Aunt: — 

" Henry [a cousin] left us today. The stage comes 
to Davenport's tavern [North Cambridge] ; so he had 
to go up there and meet it. . . . 

"We had [to] wait a long time for the stage and at 
last it came, with 6 white horses. . . . Fast Day 
Henry and me went up to Prospect-Hill [Somer- 
ville]. Unluckily the mill was not going, but we ran 
round and saw lots of little fortifications, and found 
an old well nearly covered with a large stone which 
I have heard was made in the Revolution. I brought 
home two stones from it." 

To his brother in Maryland he wrote when eleven 
years old : — 

"I have got 5 more Waverley Novels since you 
have been gone: Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The 
Pirates, and the 1st and 2nd Series of Chronicles of 
the Canongate, besides Peveril of the Peak which 
you left behind. Sunday School is in the Courthouse 




STEPHEN HIGGINSON, I/7O-1834 



AN OLD-FASHIONED HOME 17 

now. ... I shall like to hear about a fox-hunt. Are 
there any slaves at Mr. Martini, and do they blow a 
conch in the morning to collect them? ... I read the 
Spectator a few days ago." 

Aunt Nancy received the two following letters: — 

"How are you? ... I am reading the Tales of a 
Grandfather and like them very much. ... I am 
learning the conjugation of the verb parler, to 
speak. ... I think that I shall go into Caesar, after 
the vacation, at school. ... I have seen some snow- 
drops already in Mrs. Carpenter's yard. I meant to 
ask her for some the other day, but she was not at 
home. I am learning to waltz now. Several days 
ago, there was a fire here. It was at the Lyceum. As 
soon as I woke up in the morning, I heard Henry 
saying 'Oh Tommy there is a fire. , I looked out of 
the window and saw a blaze. ... I asked Sister Anna, 
if we might [go] and she said we might if we would 
not go beyond the common fence. We went and; 
when we got there we found people in abundance. 
As we were going along, Thornton [Ware] caught up 
with us having in each hand one of his father's fire- 
buckets. He seemed to be quite at home there. 
There were a great many blankets, &c, hanging on 
the fence. . . . Some burnt papers were found as far 
as Dr. Holmes's. There were a great many books 
thrown out of the window. ... I suppose I have not 
given you a very good description of the fire, but it is 
as good as I can give. I was glad to receive your 
knife, for I wanted it very much. Tell brother 



18 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Stephen that I took the schooner that I was making 
when he came here, to pieces. I am now making a 
sloop instead of it. I think this is a pretty long letter, 
so Goodbye. Love to all. 

''Your affectionate nephew, 

"Wentworth." 

"Dear Aunt Nancy, — 

"I have just been reading 'Pride and Prejudice* 
and ' Horse-Shoe Robinson,' a book by the author of 
'Swallow Barn/ both which are very entertaining. I 
have also read Miss Burney's 'Cecelia.'" 

To his mother he thus recounted his doings: — 

" I will now tell you of our May party. We met on 
the 30th of April at 5 a.m. just down by Thornton's to 
choose a queen. . . . Afterwards we went to Mount 
Auburn and walked and played until 10 o'clock 
when we came home. ... I forgot to say that as [we] 
were going to Mount Auburn we stopped a little 
while at Mrs. Foster's and she gave us some cake. 
We found no flowers except half blown anemones." 

" Dearly-Beloved Mother, — 

' '"The miniature tigresses' (that is Aunt Nancy, 

and Mrs. ) being absent, I sit down, away from 

the discord of feminine voices, which there usually is 
when I write! What do you think of that? . . . Aunt 
Nancy will hardly ever show me any of your letters, 
for she says you always write sentiment to her, and 
sublunary things to the rest of us. 

"I had a splendid time on the fourth of July. I 



AN OLD-FASHIONED HOME 19 

went into Boston ... for the sake of seeing the fire- 
works in the evening. I walked in with Thornton, at 
about 10 A.M. . . . The children were delighted to see 
'Tommy,' as they both called me. I played 'me 
hidey' with Lizzy for ever so long. We saw several 
companies go by. At last came the grand pageant. . . . 
After dinner we went down onto Long, Central, and 
India Wharves, on board of a great many vessels, 
and had fine fun." 

And this is his comment on the fireworks: — 

"Suffice it to say that I never in the whole course 
of my long life saw such a beautiful sight." 

To his mother he again writes at the age of 
twelve: — 

"The books that I have read lately have been the 
1 Heiress ' and 'The Select British Poets,' a great 

big book. . . . William has gone on a whaling 

voyage for two years and a half, round Cape Horn. 
Aunt N. thinks this is very well for him." 

The last paragraph is explained by a sentence in 
Higginson's "Old Cambridge" which says, "Cam- 
bridge boys were still sent to sea as a cure for naugh- 
tiness." 

At about this time, in 1834, Wentworth's father 
died. Two years later Mrs. Higginson sold the 
Kirkland Street house and removed to a smaller one 
on Garden Street, which had been built by her son 



20 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Francis. This house is no longer standing, having 
been absorbed by Radcliffe College. Wentworth 
wrote this description of a visit to their former 

home : — 

April 13, 1836. 
" I went to our [old] house to see the auction. Mr. 
Morse begun with the dining-room, then went to the 
back parlour and then to the study. The champagne 
bottles sold for 4! cents apiece; the clock for $3! ; 
and a little table in there for 1 cent. . . . There was 
an old curious chair, which Mr. Morse finding he 
could not sell, broke. I was much obliged to him for 
I got a nice bat by it." 

Occasionally a bit of autobiography is found 
among the old letters, as this : — 

" I vividly remember when I first swam above my 
depth in the Charles River. We boys had been learn- 
ing to swim at a point in the river not far from the 
willows where we played and read Spenser's ' Faerie 
Queene.' The first time I swam across from one 
point to another in this river was perhaps the proud- 
est moment of my life. I had no feeling of fear, but 
one of great confidence. All along Mt. Auburn St. 
on the side bordering the river were apple trees and 
no houses." 

At the age of twelve the boy kept a diary of his 
own, from which it appears that one of his amuse- 
ments was attending lectures on such subjects as 
these: The French Revolution, Ancient History, the 



AN OLD-FASHIONED HOME 21 

poet Southey, and miscellaneous lectures by "Rev. 
Waldo Emerson.' ' 

The habit of omnivorous reading, which clung to 
him through his long life, can always be taken for 
granted. At this period he read "Philip Van Arte- 
velde," always a favorite, for the third time. A little 
later he speaks of spending many half-days in book- 
stores. 

During all these evidences of unusual maturity, 
compared with the slower juvenile development of 
to-day, the record shows a healthy interest in boyish 
amusements and activities. For instance : — 

"Went to see Signor Blitz the juggler, Court 
House; produced 2 rabbits, guinea pig and cat from 
a tin." 

He was fond of visiting the ruins of the Ursuline 
Convent in Charlestown, the burning of which had 
made a great impression on his youthful mind, and 
which seems to have first aroused his love for reli- 
gious tolerance. He walked often to Boston and 
spent a good deal of time at Mount Auburn or ' ' Sweet 
Auburn." In his Decoration Day address at Sanders 
Theatre, in 1904, he thus alluded to the old play- 
ground : — 

11 1 remember our great cemetery, Mount Auburn, 
when it was not yet a cemetery, but was called Sweet 
Auburn still; when no sacred associations made it 



22 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

sweeter, and when its trees looked down on no funer- 
als but those of the bird and the bee." 

In the boyish record of walks and games, girls of 
his acquaintance are often mentioned, and not al- 
ways with deference, as when he lost a philopena to 

Henrietta B and exclaimed, " Confound her!" 

These girl friends seem to have been known by sym- 
bolic names, as he often speaks of meeting " Poetry," 
on the street, or walking with " Sensibility" or 
"Spinster." The boys also rejoiced in nicknames, for 
"Soap" and "Broadsides" are frequently men- 
tioned, and it is stated that "no one danced with 
Sensibility except Broadsides." 

These were happy, care-free days. But a new and 
thrilling experience was at hand. It was a proud day 
in Wentworth's life when, at the age of thirteen 
(1837), he began a student's life at Harvard, entering 
the freshman class which contained forty-five mem- 
bers, of whom he was the youngest. 



Ill 

THE BOY STUDENT 

In his college days, Wentworth Higginson was 
uncomfortably tall, shy, and reserved. He presented 
a curious combination of qualities — intellectual pre- 
cocity with immaturity of character, and a marked 
love of study with great fondness for athletic sports. 
He was given to self-analysis, inclined to be some- 
what sentimental, and, partly owing to his extreme 
youth, was not popular among his fellow-students. 
His only intimate friend in the freshman class was 
Francis E. Parker, who always held the place of first 
scholar, and who later became a prominent Boston 
lawyer. The two boys were rivals in rank and two 
years apart in age. Under date of May 22, 1839, 
Parker wrote of his young classmate, then a sopho- 
more: "I like Wentworth rather, quite well. He is 
now young but a good scholar — tolerable looking, 
awkward.' ' 

There were other members of the class of 1841 
who attained distinction in later life. Among them 
were the Boston physicians, Dr. Edward Clarke and 
Dr. Francis Minot. Two of the men took high rank 



24 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

as officers in the Union army; and the list of those 
who made their mark includes Henry F. Durant, the 
founder of Wellesley College. An intimate friend 
who entered college two years after Wentworth was 
Levi Thaxter, later the ardent student of Browning 
and FitzGerald. He did much to guide wisely young 
Higginson's literary tendencies. 

The lifelong friendship between Thomas Went- 
worth Higginson and Edward Everett Hale also 
began while they were undergraduates. In some of 
the former's unpublished notes is this comparison: — 

" There was a curious parallel in some respects 
between the life of Edward Everett Hale and my 
own. He is nearly two years older than myself, 
graduated at Harvard College two years before me 
(1839); each of us having the second rank in his 
class, a time when much more was thought of college 
rank than now. There were analogies also in physi- 
cal matters between Hale and myself in some direc- 
tions which had perhaps a bearing on the later prob- 
lem of old age. Each of us was six feet tall; each of 
us combined the love of three studies which are 
rarely combined — Greek, mathematics, and natu- 
ral history — and had on this last point the invalu- 
able influence of Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, 
librarian, botanist, and entomologist. Each of us, 
therefore, was tempted out of doors, a very desirable 
temptation to naturally studious boys, and likely to 
strengthen their constitutions." 



THE BOY STUDENT 25 

From the same notes the following reminiscences 
are taken: — 

"When I entered Harvard College an * Abstract 
of Laws and Regulations ' of the University was given 
me. The one thing that now seems of peculiar interest 
in that circular is an item headed, ' Dress. On Sab- 
baths and Exhibition days, and on all public occasions, 
each student in public shall wear a black or black- 
mixed coat, with buttons of the same color/ What 
would a student think, today, of this regulation! 

"While in college I took an active interest in all 
athletic exercises, kicked football assiduously in the 
autumn on the so-called Delta where Memorial Hall 
now stands. We also played cricket of the old-fash- 
ioned kind with large bats and heavy balls, an outfit 
now stowed away by gift of the class in some unseen 
closet of the Harvard Union. The few who could 
afford it rode on horseback; in winter Fresh Pond 
afforded relays of beautiful black ice [for skating] 
after each ice-cutting. 

"I had invitations to join several of the college 
clubs, but declined membership in all but the I. O. H. 
which my elder brother, Waldo, helped organize and 
in which I was very much interested; and also the 
Institute of 1770 which was of elder date and of more 
permanent fame. Here the members had frequent 
debates." 

Through the four years of college life Wentworth 
kept a minute account of all his doings in the form of 
a college journal. In these records are preserved, not 



26 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

only lists of books read, but of " books I want to 
read," "of pieces I can repeat"; of bouquets (always 
composed of wild flowers he had gathered), with 
dates of presentation to his friends; of calls he had 
made, of drives and walks he had taken ; and of the 
engagements and marriages of friends, as, " Dr. Howe 
and Julia Ward of New York"; "Mr. Longfellow 
and Fanny Apple ton." He was equally careful and 
minute about all his expenditures, the latter being a 
lifelong habit. At one time he seriously thought of 
making the law his profession, and with this end in 
view he made an inventory of all the lawyers in 
Boston, and of various law books. 

He was always a great pedestrian, often walking 
nine or ten miles a day, and taking evening walks 
with Parker far into the "gloomy and desolate" 
country, after which he sometimes sat up reading 
into the small hours. His walks were varied by 
wanderings in old graveyards to study the quaint 
epitaphs. The daily rambles were, however, con- 
fined to no locality, as this note testifies: — 

"Walked to Charlestown through Lechmere Point 
[East Cambridge] and thence to Bunker Hill. Char- 
ley stumped and we rushed up the monument with a 
lantern. A weary distance, but finally got to the top. 
Splendid view all around. Counted 24 inward-bound 
schooners in the harbour." 



THE BOY STUDENT 27 

The boy's frequent walks between Boston and 
Cambridge were interrupted at the Port to refresh 
himself with cream-cakes, and he seems to have been 
unmolested by the "Portchucks" (the Cambridge- 
port boys) in spite of the rivalry existing between the 
youth of the latter place and that of Old Cambridge. 
The journal also mentions "a pleasant time" at a 
horse-race, frequently sailing round on a raft at 
Fresh Pond; playing leap-frog, hockey, "pirate," and 
rolling ninepins at the same place, winding up the 
report with "had first-rate fun." In his elation at 
having recited ninety-five lines of Latin without 
many corrections, he records that he kicked football 
by moonlight ; and he sometimes speaks of two hours 
spent in the water, once climbing a ten-foot fence to 
reach the wharf. In spite of his strenuous evenings, 
he usually rose at five to study. Living at home the 
first year, he found various ways to make himself 
useful. He chopped wood diligently, sometimes by 
candlelight; recorded transplanting clematis from 
the Norton place, and once gathering six dozen water- 
lilies at Fresh Pond. One day he was "engaged 
about J hour in driving a strange yellow cat out of 
the cellar," and in the afternoon making rat-traps. 
He took boxing-lessons, played chess and back- 
gammon with his mother, recited poetry and read 
aloud. Another amusement was firing the cross-bow 



28 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGOINSON 

with his cousin Farley Storrow "at bottles in the 
closet. Broke 5." He also speaks of "shooting with 
same at a phrenological bust. Smashed /" 

Later he wrote to a friend, — 

"It is dreadful to me to see a woman kill an in- 
sect." 

Although his strong aversion to giving pain kept 
him from joining shooting expeditions when older, 
he says in his youthful journal: — 

"Went to shoot peeps with Thacher's gun. Some- 
thing was the matter with the gun, however. It 
would not go. In the evening F. and I fired at a 
mark in a field, with pistols." 

He was fond of visiting the Botanic Gardens (a 
habit he never abandoned) , and was president of the 
college Natural History Society. Such notes as 
these often occur in his journals: — 

"Caught a little green snake and afterwards 
killed and preserved it. 

"Skeletonizing a toad. 

"Talking with Dr. Harris, I was seized with a 
larva-mania and hunted for them. Obtained a vari- 
ety of ugly worms which I am going to keep through 
vacation till they turn to chrysalises. I feel more 
entomological than oratorical just now. 

"Tried to draw some insects — particularly a 
beautiful Papilio Philenor Harris had given me. 
Succeeded quite well." 



THE BOY STUDENT 29 

That he had a boy's healthy appetite we may judge 
from these statements made in his freshman year : — 

" Thanksgiving Day. Dinner, walked into the 
turkey, ham, pudding and pie! " — "Eat 2 quarts of 
cherries with P. at noon, his treat." — " Eaten 12 
ices in 3 days. Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursd : 4 
each day." — " Home at XI & made half a pitcher of 
iced molasses & water — molasses, not very good — 
drank some, however — reading Ladies' Magazine, 
&c, until dinner." 

Occasionally he went to an evening party. After 
one of these gatherings, he reports: "Played back- 
gammon. Danced. Had a miserable time." Those 
who knew him only in later years find it hard to 
comprehend how great a social stumbling-block was 
the youth's early diffidence. Improvement soon 
began, as the next year he wrote, — 

"Went at 9 p.m. to a party. Had a decent time. 
Splendid ice-cream." 

The following extracts are taken from his fresh- 
man journal, showing what an intimate relation 
existed in those simple days between President and 
student: — 

"President Quincy was present at our Livy recita- 
tion. Lucky. I never recited better." — "President 
Q. was present at our recitation in Herodotus. Got 
along decently." — "Went to President to get my 



30 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

marks. He wants me to behave well, so he says at 
least.* ' — " Deaded in Geometry for the first time." 
— "Cut both recitations for amusement. Spent 
some time in the library [a favorite place of refuge]." 

On his fourteenth birthday, December 22, 1837, 
he found that he was the youngest undergraduate. 
Two months later his journal records some of the 
lively scenes then witnessed at prayer- time : — 

" Many of the class having become slightly boozy, 
made somewhat of a noise in prayers." 

And again: — 

"What a sight the Chapel presented at prayers 
this morning! About 200 panes of glass blown up, 
the hands of the clock taken off, and the dial stove in. 
The front panels of the lower part of the pulpit 
removed, and all the damask between the pillars 
torn away, and ' A Bone for old Quin to pick ' writ- 
ten on the wall." 

On another page he exclaims : — 

" I have most indecorously omitted to mention one 
event . . . my receiving a Detur, Coleridge in 3 vol- 
umes, i2mo, college seal and all. 24 were given. 
Mine is pretty fair." 

These volumes in the original handsome bindings 
are still on the shelves of the Higginson library. 

In after years he often alluded with amusement 
to his youthful susceptibility, and wrote : — 



THE BOY STUDENT 31 

" I don't believe there ever was a child in whom the 
sentimental was earlier developed than in me." 

When a freshman, he records meeting an old friend, 
"now a fine-looking girl of sweet sixteen. I think 
I will fall in love with her in vacation! " Of another 
damsel, met when away from home, he says: — 

"It is not exactly love I feel towards M. C. D. — 
it is rather a Platonic affection, if there is any such 
thing — or a connubial one." 

When he was introduced to Mr. Papanti's "best 
scholar and very agreeable girl," he escorted her 
home from dancing-school and then wrote: — 

"To bed at 11J. Smitten." 

Apparently the impression lingered as this reproach 
follows later : — 

"Felt sentimental and loafing. Oh M. C!" 

and 

" Dulcinea absent for which I am glad, for to have 
seen her would have used me up for some days." 

Then he confides to his journal: — 

"By the way, I am getting quite susceptible to 
female charms." 

Again, he reports. — 

"Had a glorious flirtation with H. & P. in the 
Study, first reading sentiments in the parlour, &c." 



32 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

This letter to his boon companion, Parker, has no 
date, but was undoubtedly written somewhat early 
in his college career: — 

"Oh be joyful — hooray — hooray — Inter- 
viewed the eccentric brick this morning and he 
informs me that the term begins l three weeks from 
next Monday ' — id est, the 2nd Monday after Com- 
mencement. Glorious, glorious — engage the horse 
& wagon, get a fresh supply of powder & shot, have 
your duck pants washed, brush up the Eminent, 
sharpen the knife and Jack, — and please the pigs 
we'll be off yet. . . . 

1 ' I cut my oration Monday and devoted the day 
to botanizing, which cheered me wonderfully and I 
feel quite nice now." 

At the end of his sophomore year, he resolved to 
be fourth or fifth scholar, and a month later his diary 
contained this caution : — 

"Look out, Higginson, or your resolution, top of 
page 13, will go to grass !" 

The college term closed on July 19, and he wrote on 
that day : — 

"My Sophomore year is now over, this day con- 
cluding the second term. My rank during this term 
has been pretty satisfactory (v. p. 8 [of journal]). I 
must beat Hoffman, however, if possible." 

When, early in the following October, he went to 
the President, the latter said to him, "You stand 



THE BOY STUDENT 33 

very well. I couldn't wish you to stand much 
better." To the account of this interview, the young 
student adds, " If I only could be 3rd scholar." Two 
days later he speaks of lounging on the grass of the 
Delta with various friends, and exclaims, " I 've given 
up all hopes of keeping above Parker." A little 
earlier in that year, Professor Felton had required 
the youth to translate the soliloquy of Henry V into 
Greek iambic verse, which the victim pronounced 
"A terrible visitation!" 

Of the occasion on which this translation was pre- 
sented to the public, Higginson wrote in later life: — 

" There lies before me a printed programme, en- 
titled 'Harvard University, Cambridge. Order of 
Performances for Exhibition, Wednesday, July 17, 
1839.' It must have been a great day for me, for 
this is the first exhibition in which I took part. . . . 
I have somewhere, among my papers, my first efforts 
at that Greek poetic translation which was practi- 
cally rewritten by Professor Felton and recited on 
the actual occasion with a dignity that I did not for- 
get for a long time. My two nearest rivals in rank at 
that time spoke a Greek dialogue, a thing not done 
for many years, I believe, in the college." 

The same event is described in his college diary: — 

"I spoke excellently, my friends say so, remem- 
bered my part and was much applauded. I felt per- 
fectly comfortable & cool on the stage but badly 



34 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

before going on. Drank 7 or 8 glasses of iced lemon- 
ade of which Sedgwick made a bucket & brought it 
up to Mason's room!" 

He also mentions his attire on this important day, 
when he escorted his mother and sisters to the 
chapel wearing "black coat, new pants, dark 'ves- 
kit/ blk stockings & pumps/ ' 

His report of a later exhibition is not quite so 
creditable : — 

"Oct. 2. Had the pleasure of finishing my ora- 
tion & rewriting a good deal of it, wh. delighted me & 
I spent the rest of the day in reading Rookwood — 
also the eve'g — comfort, fire, 3 candles, rock'g chair." 

"Oct. 20. Exhib. passed off well. ... I was per- 
fectly self-possessed, but owing to looking round on 
the audience &c. did n't know what I was saying, 
made mistakes, hesitated & omitted — but they 
did n't perceive it & thought it good." * 

The next interesting event seems to have been 
Wentworth's admission to the Phi Beta Kappa. In 
an address before this society, many years later, he 
said : — 

" I was chosen into it at sixteen, for we graduated 
from college earlier in my time than now; I took 
active part in later years, under strenuous opposi- 

1 In order to save time, Mr. Higginson constantly used abbrevia- 
tions as above. Such words are henceforth given in full to avoid 
confusion. 



THE BOY STUDENT 35 

tion, in expanding it into a national organization ; I 
was President of this chapter for 3 years and of the 
national organization at the same time and helped 
build the latter up when it was so sought after that 
we had one application from a Southwestern college 
which said that they had heard of <£. B. K. and as 
they already had nine Greek letter societies it would 
be nice to have ten!" 

In the college journal, the event is thus recorded: 

"August, 1840. <E>. B. K. day — the greatest of 
my life so far. Rushed round till 9 on committee 
business — having carried the ribbons to Wheeler's 
room and put on my medal. ... I went in [to dinner] 
later than was necessary — Judge Story and the 
grandees sat at the raised West end. First course I 
had was roast beef carved by ' White ' Simmons. 2nd, 
plum pudding and apple pie, then wine, fruit and 
segars — Passed a charming afternoon, lots of wit — 
the Judge always ready and always witty, as Presi- 
dent." 

In the spring of his Junior year, Wentworth 
wrote: — 

"Such a smile as today's! The 2nd English Ora- 
tion, a first Bowdoin prize and good pieces accepted 
in the magazine — and I am for the present per- 
fectly happy." 

During the senior year he roomed in a dormitory, 
and enumerated for his mother's benefit these mod- 
est wants : — 



36 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"3 chairs of a uniform pleasing pattern. I should 
prefer 2 uniform to 3 miscellaneous. 1 Washstand, I 
Bedstead and bedding, 1 Bureau." 

Soon after leaving home, his mother wrote to him: 

"Your study and chamber look so forlorn I can- 
not bear to go near them — The Study particularly 
. . . presents a scene of desolation and order, so 
opposed to that beautiful confusion in which you 
keep it, that I find myself sighing for the odd stock- 
ings, shoes, gloves, coats, and waistcoats that whi- 
lome adorned the floor — and look in vain for the 
odds and ends of insects — bottles of gum — dirty 
boxes, and scraps of paper that reposed on the 
table—" 

and continues: — 

11 How thankful I and you ought to be, my beloved 
Son, for the pure and firm health which has enabled 
you without interruption to give yourself to your 
College Studies." 

Judging from the next report, he could hardly have 
posed for a "grave and reverend senior": — 

"The Prex sent for me. ... He found I'd cut 17 
prayers. ... I must look out. Rather a bore, for I 
shall have to cut some more for skating. . . . 

' ' I went to see Fowler, the Phrenologist at the Marl- 
boro ' . . . said I had l splendid talents ' but no appli- 
cation. . . . Lovering says I 'm the greatest trouble he 
has in recitation, and has deducted for whispering 
frequently." 



THE BOY STUDENT 37 

At this age, as well as in maturer years, Higginson 
was easily lulled to sleep by monotonous lectures or 
sermons. His college journal reports: — 

"Slept thro' sermon, hymn, prayer, read'g procla- 
mation and blessing. Pleasant! Fellows laughed at 
me a good deal." 

And of a lecture, he says, — 

" Snoozed thro' it all comfortably." 

In the winter vacation of his last year he made a 
visit to his Southern cousin, Farley Storrow, who 
was a fellow-student. In anticipation of this visit 
he wrote : — 

"If I go, I intend to have a good time . . . and 
certainly not fall in love." 

In his minute account of this journey the young trav- 
eller even gives the number of his berth on the Nor- 
wich boat. At New York he was pleased to see " Mr. 
Higginson's arrival' ' announced in a newspaper; and 
while at the Astor House, he wrote thus to Parker at 
Cambridge: 

"As I must . . . miss the class election, I write to 
give you my proxy and charge you not by any 
means to let the Bird of Paradise be chosen Poet!" 

From Philadelphia, he wrote to his mother : — 

" I was at the hotel there with H. W. Longfellow, 
Esq. ... He introduced me to the great Charles 



38 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



Sumner who was with him, for which I was duly 
grateful.", 

At Baltimore, he saw for the first time a sign, 
" Negroes bought and sold," and noticed the differ- 
ence in appearance between the "gloomy dull-look- 
ing" Baltimore negroes and a lively colored waiter 
whom he had made friends with at the New York 
hotel, and added, "Slaves and a freeman is the 
difference, I suppose." 

While in Virginia, Wentworth received this letter 
from his mother, with its pathetic reference to her 
son Thacher's fatal voyage: — 

"Now for news — Thacher sailed yesterday for 
Rio Janeiro. . . . He took out Books of all kinds, 
Scientific and literary. Theology, Law, History, 
Poetry, Philosophy, French, Spanish and English — 
he expects to be home in July. . . . 

"I hope you will be able to come to some deter- 
mination during this pilgrimage — what you would 
like best to do after you leave College. ... At any 
rate the next term had better decide the business as 
it is very important that from the time you graduate 
you should be able to support yourself independ- 
ently and be able even to lay up something to carry 
you through your Profession or to help you along 
during the first years of your setting out." 

From the autobiographical notes made in later 
life we take the following : — 



THE BOY STUDENT 39 

"During my senior year in college, I had under 
my charge a young fellow of the well known Perkins 
family, who with his elder companions, after a party, 
had sung a song beneath the window of the Presi- 
dent's wife. So he was put in my care, although we 
were of much the same age and I needed supervision 
as much as he. My room was his headquarters, al- 
though he went to his home in Jamaica Plain every 
night. Later, when I lived at Newport, he and his 
family came there to live and his children were very 
anxious to see me, because they had heard so much 
about their father's guardian." 

Continuing these notes about his college career, he 
says : — 

"My greatest peculiarity was an inordinate pas- 
sion for books — of any sort — great and small, 
heavy and light, useful or useless, nothing came 
amiss and I probably accomplished, in the first 13 
years of my life, more miscellaneous reading than 
most youths of eighteen." 

In 1906, Colonel Higginson wrote on the fly-leaf 
of one of his old textbooks (Professor Peirce's 
"Elementary Treatise on Curves, Functions, and 
Forces"): — 

"When I left college at graduation in 1841, a few 
months short of 18, I was the best mathematician 
in the class, and Prof. Peirce . . . had me placed 
at once on the examining committee in that depart- 
ment. We studied this book in sheets as it came un- 



4 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

bound from the press and I enjoyed it, and used to 
give my elder brother Waldo (Harvard, 1833) who 
was a practicing engineer, lessons out of it. . . . Now, 
at 83, I cannot comprehend one word of it. Do I 
know more or less than then?" 



IV 

THE YOUNG PEDAGOGUE 

Shortly before graduation, Wentworth Higginson 
began looking about for employment, and in June, 
1 841, was engaged by Mr. Samuel Weld, of Jamaica 
Plain, as assistant in his school for boys, at six hun- 
dred dollars per year. In August he wrote Parker, " I 
succeeded in getting a good room [at Jamaica Plain] 
for $25 the year and board from $3 to $4 [per month]." 
Settled in this new room, he began at once another 
journal. He was at first in a quandary as to whom it 
should be dedicated to, but finally decided on three 
girl friends and added, "Now to business." Homesick- 
ness assailed him at first, but after a few days he 
"got rather more comfortable, reading 'The Flirt' 
and those beautiful poetical passages in the ' Devil's 
Progress."' 

Apparently the "young pedagogue," as he calls 
himself, had no trouble in teaching the boys or mak- 
ing friends with them. He took them with him on 
his long rambles in search of flowers, and describes 
a tramp around Jamaica Pond in cloth boots in "a 
pouring rain and furious cold gale," adding, "these 



42 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

walks are nothing." But he was criticized by Mr. 
Weld for being on too informal terms with his pupils, 
and the necessary school discipline proved a hard 
problem. School began at half-past six, with an 
interval for breakfast, and then continued until 
eleven. There was also an evening session from 
seven to eight, described in the journal as the 
' ' cursed evening school, ' ' which prevented other more 
attractive plans. His favorite pupil, out of school 
hours, was Daniel Curtis, whose brilliant witticisms 
were often quoted in after years. Although Curtis 
was studious, he gave a great deal of trouble to his 
boyish preceptor. He was probably the author of 
this clever description of the young teacher which 
the latter captured as it was going the rounds of the 
school : — 

"Our tutor feeds 
At Madam Leeds, 

"And is none the thinner 
Postquam dinner 

"Est semper clever, 
Morosus never. 

"Et nunquam hollers 
At the scholars, 

"But whenever they caper 
Transcribes them to paper." 



THE YOUNG PEDAGOGUE 43 

The friendly teacher sometimes took Curtis with 
him to make evening calls on young ladies. Re- 
turning quite late on one occasion the daring pupil 
reached his room by way of the waterspout, for which 
adventure his tutor was reprimanded. Another im- 
prudent action on the part of the boyish teacher 
which naturally aroused criticism was riding on 
horseback with one of the girls from the opposite 
boarding-school, this damsel quietly climbing out of 
the window to take these rides in the early morning, 
while her schoolmates were still asleep. 

In these years Wentworth Higginson seems to have 
been somewhat of a dandy, rejoicing in what bits of 
fine apparel his scanty means allowed him to lay 
hands on. For he reported himself once as " strut- 
ting' ' after church to display the "combination of 
gaiters and high heels"; and said also that he had 
his hair cut and curled which improved it. He some- 
times went to parties and was fond of playing whist. 
After one of these gatherings he wrote, " By the way, 
nudity was rather the rage." He also recorded the 
possession of "a sudden entire confidence" in his 
conversing powers; and on the arrival of visitors he 
" talked with calm miscellaneousness till tea-time." 
His family were a little uneasy about him at this 
time, and his sisters found fault with him for being 
frivolous, whereupon he wrote in his journal: " I had 



44 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



never thought of it before — but I think it is so. . . . 
How I prize every moment taken from my occupa- 
tion which I believe I shall be perfectly sick of 
before the year is out." To add to his discomfort, he 
once when in Boston missed the omnibus on account 
of having spent ten minutes in a bookstore, and 
walking rapidly to school, he arrived late and re- 
corded that Mr. Weld received his apology in omin- 
ous silence. The next day he wrote, " Sleepy and 
homesick all day." 

The young teacher continued ineffectual efforts 
to like smoking, which he had decided in college 
days was a necessary accomplishment. His diary 
says, "Got quite enthusiastic in reading about Stu- 
dent Life in Germany, got a pipe and smoked it as 
well as I could, and determined to get a meerschaum." 
But the experiment was a failure and later smoking 
was wholly abandoned. He added, "Read Italian, 
having brought over [from Cambridge] my books 
and resolved to set about it resolutely. Read poetry 
by a moonlit window." Another evening after the 
pangs of toothache, genius burned, and he sat up 
until three in the morning writing blank verse. He 
read one of his poetical effusions to his family and 
"they laughed at its sentimentality, which enraged 
me . . . went to bed angry and feeling unappreciated. 
Resolved to show them no more poetry." 



THE YOUNG PEDAGOGUE 45 

The youths imagination was as vivid as a child's, 
and after reading " Undine' ' he wrote, "Just now I 
heard a noise outside the window and looked up in 
hopes it was Kuhleborn — oh, how dreadful it is to 
be in a land where there are no supernatural beings 
visible — not even any traditions of them!" 

Christmas evening of that year was spent in 
serenading a Cambridge belle; but his companion, 
Levi Thaxter, escaping at a critical point, Went- 
worth, according to his journal, broke down in the 
song "Love wakes and weeps," and "made an 
absurd exit, scrambling over fences. . . . Home and 
gladly took off my horridly pinching boots — spent 
the evening sociably, reading Brother Jonathan and 
eating burnt almonds." 

In addition to school perplexities, the unfortunate 
tutor's serenity was sometimes disturbed by the 
state of his purse, for he wrote, "Grumbled over my 
accounts. My affairs '11 go to the devil if I don't 
economize." After six months in this unsatisfactory 
position, Higginson decided to leave the school and 
to become a private tutor in the family of his 
cousin, Stephen H. Perkins, of Brookline. The last 
days at Jamaica Plain he thus describes: — 

"February 28. School for the last time — . . . 
Bid the boys good-bye quite satisfactorily — they 
are really sorry to lose me, and I felt so too. . . . Had 



46 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

a delightful evening till near II packing — then home 
and worked like a horse till I — taking up the carpet 
and everything else. 

" March I. Rose before 6 and fixed things. . . . We 
got Mrs. Putnam's ladder and the wardrobe slid 
down very easily/ ' 

Wentworth now went to his mother's in Cambridge 
for a few weeks, whence he wrote, " An exquisite soft 
spring day which would have cheered the soul of a 
lobster — and it did mine." A few days later he 
added, "Assumed my Cambridge state of mind. . . . 
I certainly intend to try — and not give way to the 
causeless melancholy I have occasionally fallen 
into heretofore," and "resolved to wake up from my 
dreams and work." 

All through these early years, one finds allusions 
to a habit of indulging in occasional despondent 
moods, when silence and sadness cast their spell over 
him. These visitations lasted into middle life, but 
were eventually outgrown. In a letter written a year 
after leaving Jamaica Plain, Wentworth said: — 

"You will be glad that I got hold of a stock of 
spirits this evening that may last me thro' some days, 
who knows. But that's always the way with me — 
the grasshopper is a burden to me, but I can carry a 
hippopotamus and dance and sing." 




MRS. STEPHEN HIGGINSON (LOUISA STORROW) 



THE YOUNG PEDAGOGUE 47 

He wrote his mother : — 

" I always must envy these thoroughly intellectual 
men who go on so regularly with neither passions nor 
feelings to interrupt them — I shall never be so, I 
fear — for every now and then comes something and 
upsets me. Either a cloud that will pursue me — or 
sunbeam that I must pursue . . . and I sometimes 
sigh to see that I do not become calmer as I grow 
older." 

Even at this early age he declared, "My great in- 
tellectual difficulty has been having too many irons 
in the fire." This was a trouble with which he was 
destined to contend always. 

A month later, in April, 1842, about the time 
that his mother and sisters removed to Brattleboro, 
Vermont, Wentworth transferred his belongings to 
Brookline where he was to teach the three sons of 
Mr. Perkins. He took with him a quantity of books* 
which were throughout life inseparable companions 
in his wanderings. In preparation for this new po- 
sition he had purchased a new " flash vest!" and re- 
ports, "Promenaded the [Boston] streets in my silk 
attire till 7." Again, "Took a walk after church — 
my new pants perfect. . . . Walked out from Boston 
to Cambridge. My new boots pinched my feet so 
I could hardly walk. What did I do thereupon! 
Stopped at the Port, sat down, pulled them off, and 
walked home barefoot. It was dark, remember." 



48 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

As to his school duties, the tutor wrote : — 

"I am getting on nicely in my parental relations. 
Order of performances thus. Rise 6J-7, bathe, 
dress and see that the boys have dittoed by 7§ — 
up stairs till breakfast at 8 — school 9-1 1 . . . dine 
at 3. From 4 to 8 \ my own master — 8| to 10 three- 
handed whist with the venerable, and to bed 10 \ - 
1 1 regularly. Thus you see our life is systematic and 
simple — the aforesaid three-handed whist is as 
great a blessing as Homeopathy.' * 

The Brookline stay was eventful, because under 
new influences Wentworth Higginson rapidly devel- 
oped and matured. There was a large circle of rela- 
tives within a radius of a few miles, and he took part 
in their frequent meetings and merrymakings. It 
was in Brookline that he first met his second cous- 
in, Mary Channing, daughter of Dr. Walter Chan- 
ning, and sister of the Concord poet, Ellery Chan- 
ning. A few years older than himself, unworldly, 
intellectual, and brilliant in conversation, she proved 
a congenial companion. She was a frequent visitor 
at the Perkins homestead, and after an acquaintance 
of a few months the cousins became engaged, Hig- 
ginson being then a youth of nineteen. 

One of the absorbing interests of his little world 
at this time was magnetism, various members of the 
circle trying experiments upon each other. "No- 



THE YOUNG PEDAGOGUE 49 

thing is spoken of here," he wrote, "but the Com- 
munity and Magnetism." The group of Brookline 
cousins often exchanged visits with the young peo- 
ple at the Community, or Brook Farm, in Roxbury, 
where in modern parlance the experiment of the 
simple life was being tried. Wentworth thus de- 
scribes his first drive thither: — 

" I had to ask the way to the Community — but 
we came in sight of it at last, and a pleasant looking 
place it was. We passed some young men belonging 
there with long hair, who had just been gathering 
flowers and looked happy as possible. ... I was 
delighted with the appearance of everything — and 
was especially aroused by hearing that young Dana 
[later editor of the New York Sun] formerly of the 
Junior class, was a great gun there. . . . We saw 
genteel looking men too, painting a boat outside — 
and altogether the combination of gentlemen and 
laborers was perfect." 

At another time, he spoke of again meeting "Com- 
munity Dana, the handsomest fellow I know and an 
excellent, cultivated one too." A later visit seems to 
have given a somewhat different impression, as he 
wrote, "At the Community we saw a variety of 
dirty men, boys and girls; and one or two clean 
ones." 

It was during the Brookline stay that Wentworth 
wrote and published what he called his first poem, 



59 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGp.INSON 

the one on the Sistine Madonna, and he now began 
to feel some of the thrills of successful authorship. 
He quotes from a friend's letter: "Ma wishes me to 
enquire with more remarks than I have room for who 
wrote the Madonna and Child. It is much admired 
and copied here and is said to be by some one of the 
name of Higginson." The young poet adds, "It's 
quite exciting, is n't it?" Some months later, Rev. 
Samuel Johnson, then a divinity student, said in 
reference to these verses, "Then you did write that 
beautiful thing." Going to the Craigie house one 
day he saw Mrs. H. W. Longfellow, who "said more 
things about the Madonna," and looked "things 
unutterable out of her unfathomable eyes"; and 
when Mr. Longfellow included the poem in his 
volume called "The Estray," the youth's cup was 
full. 

In Brookline, the young man had plenty of leisure 
for his favorite pursuits, for he wrote: — 

" I have taken up reading very strong, — am much 
interested in Carlyle's Miscellanies and have quite a 
fancy for German — have begun to dabble a little 
in the study of it — next winter I shall go into lan- 
guages wholesale." 

And in one evening he perpetrated "four sonnets to 
Longfellow, Motherwell, Tennyson, and Sterling, — 
good — the best things perhaps I 've written." 



THE YOUNG PEDAGOGUE 51 

From Ellery Channing he gleaned some items about 
the profits of literature: — 

" Ellery has just been telling me about Hawthorne 
whom he thinks the only man in the country who 
supports himself by writing. He is enabled to do this 
as his expenses are very small. Ellery says he [Haw- 
thorne] might live for $300, as he does at Concord 
— there his farm gives apples enough to pay his 
rent, $75. He sells these and fishes in the river in 
summer. His magazine articles are paid higher than 
any one's except Willis who gets $5 a page. He could 
get what he chooses, probably $30, $40 or $50 an 
article. He is to be a regular contributor to three 
magazines — the Pioneer, Sargent's, and the Demo- 
cratic Review. This of course would give him $1000 
to $1500 a year. He writes very slowly and elabor- 
ately. Willis probably can get $50 for an article." 

In planning his future, the young tutor wrote: — 

" Spent the whole morning at home — reading 
Richter's Life and meditating and made the day an 
era in my life by fixing the resolution of not study- 
ing a profession. . . . The resolve is perfectly settled 
and perfectly tranquil with me, that I will come as 
near starving as Richter did — that I will labor as 
intensely and suffer as much — sooner than violate 
my duty toward my Spiritual Life" and "to do my 
duty to the world at large, in whatever manner I 
can best use my talents. . . . For myself I believe 
and trust that I have got above following Ambition as 



52 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

the leading motive. . . . For neither Wealth nor Fame 
will, I trust, make me happy or satisfy me." 

He exclaimed that summer, "Give me books and 
nature — and Jeisure and means to give myself up 
to them and some one to share my ideas with, and 
I think I should be perfectly happy." And later, 
" I feel overflowing with mental energies — I will be 
Great if I can." 

While in Brookline, Higginson tried to live freely 
and simply like the birds and squirrels, declaring 
that " The only true free man is he who can live on 
a little." In after years, he called this stay the May- 
time of his life, which he, however, qualified by add- 
ing, "The present is not beautiful until overhung 
with the mosses and veiled in the shadows of the 
Past. ... I think the free communion with Nature 
in past years has done much for my mental health. 
Those long afternoons in the woods with no care, no 
solicitude as to time and place, no companion but 
my tin box. . . . That Bigelow's Botany of mine is 
the most precious book I have — not a page of it but 
is redolent of summer sounds, senses and images." 
But he never became reconciled to his work, and 
wrote in November: "To Teaching I have an utter 
and entire aversion — I love children passionately 
and am able to attach them and to discipline them, 
but I am not fitted for an intellectual guide and I hate 



THE YOUNG PEDAGOGUE 53 

the office"; and added "I read the Theory of 
Teaching (which put me in despair).' ' 

The school was often held out of doors, and one of 
the features was a course of talks to the boys on 
animals. In 1852, Higginson wrote to Harriet 
Prescott : — 

"When I was of your age and had scholars like 
you, — or as you will, — I used to take them long 
walks and teach them to use their senses. We used 
sometimes to have school in a wood beside the house 
or in a great apple tree; and once on a rock in the 
wood there came to us a new scholar, a little weasel 
who glided among us with his slender sinuous body 
and glittering eyes, while we sat breathless to watch 
him. I fancy the boys will remember that little 
visitor longer than any of their Natural History Les- 



sons/' 



But in the Brookline period Wentworth was still a 
boy himself as this note from his journal shows: — 

"I made an Excursion (about \ 12) & attacked 
the 4 steel signs in the neighborhood — no one sus- 
pecting but the girls. No danger — in spite of the $50 
reward." 

Truly history repeats itself, for a few years ago, 
Colonel Higginson's doorbell was tremblingly rung 
by a young relative, then a Harvard student, who 
confessed that he also had been "attacking signs" 
and in consequence had just passed the night in the 
police station. 



54 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



Mr. Perkins, whose three sons were under Went- 
worth's care, was absent part of the time, leaving 
the young tutor in charge, and then his duties in- 
cluded tending fires and pumping water. He never 
objected to manual labor, but wrote, " I always love 
to do any work — digging paths or chopping wood. 
I think I should always like to do both for myself, 
and feel thus far at least independent of other's 
hands/ ' In the spring of 1843, he was urged by his 
employer to stay another year, at a salary of $250 in- 
cluding board and lodging. In the letter which Mr. 
Perkins wrote about this project, he praised him 
highly, and said that his devotion to the boys was 
only equalled by theirs to him. But the young man 
could not be induced to remain longer and wrote: — 

"Much as I am interested in the boys . . . and 
sorry as I shall be to part with them, my removal 
from the responsibility of their intellectual Education 
will be a very great relief to me. I shall never love 
teaching — anybody. ' ' 



V 

THE CALL TO PREACH 

Wentworth Higginson wrote to his mother, August 
25, 1843: — 

" If fortune offers nothing better I mean to do this: 
Go to Cambridge. Take a proctorship. Live with 
the strictest economy. I can place my minimum at 
$300 — $100 to be got by my proctorship and the 
rest by literary labors — ... So I may regard it as 
from this day settled ! 

"That I need not study a Profession. No Law! 
Hurrah !" 

And this is his estimate of necessary expenses: — 

"Board, not over $120 

Clothes 75 

Washing 25 

Incidentals 30 

$250"! 

Continuing his meditations upon the proposed 

Cambridge move he again wrote to his mother : — 

" I don't want to keep up the dignity Fmust there 
as proctor — I want to be a boy as long as I can. . . . 
This brings another Evil as regards dress. Could I, 
in proctorial dignity, figure round in blouses and 
bobtailed frocks? If not it would affect my finances 



56 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

much. ... To be elegant, or even genteel in dress 
always, I will not undertake. ... I have been 
brought up poor and am not afraid to continue so; 
and certainly I shall be glad to be so, if it is a neces- 
sary accompaniment to a life spent as I wish to 
spend it. . . . 

" By the various old gentlemen who ask me every 
time they see me what my profession is to be, I do 
not expect my plans to be understood or approved ; 
I shall expect to be frowned at by many and laughed 
at by some. But I do not wish to be frowned at or 
laughed at by you. ... I can never be happy my- 
self or feel that I am doing my duty, if I neglect a 
single bright flower that I might plant in your even- 
ing days. And to you in return I look for sympathy 
and interest." 

This beautiful tribute to Wentworth's mother is 
taken from a letter to Miss Channing : — 

"I think mother is one of the most fascinating 
persons I ever saw. She enjoys nature with a fresh- 
ness more unalloyed than I ever saw in anybody. I 
wish all the world could have a chance to know her 
loveliness before she passes away from it. She is the 
most wonderful being I ever knew. There are no 
bounds to my enthusiasm about her." 

And on the back of one letter his mother wrote 
these touching words : — 

"He is the star that gilds the evening of my days 
— and he must shine bright and clear — or my path 
will be darkened." 



THE CALL TO PREACH 57 

Soon after announcing his new plan, Higginson 
moved to Cambridge and wrote to his betrothed : — 

"I shall live very unobtrusively and probably 
have no intimates, but I shall have a world made up 
of you and books and nature and myself and a great 
touch of unknown human nature in the streets of 
Boston besides. Oh it will be nice — so free. 

" 'Life went a Maying 

With nature, love and liberty 
When I was young.' " 

In this hopeful spirit, the young emigrant loaded 
his traps upon a wagon and led the horse over muddy 
roads to the room he had chosen in the first building 
called College House. The new quarters he described 
in a letter to his Aunt Nancy : — 

"Here I am very nicely fixed, Madam; a very 
pleasant place is the Old Den, I assure you, particu- 
larly this room, North East third story — com- 
manding a pretty view of the College Yard, especially 
neat in the morning — dew — grass — trees — library 
ground-glass windows — sunshine and so on — over- 
looks the street too very nicely — Brighton cattle 
— enthusiastic pigs — agonized maternal cows — 
heartrent filial calves and all that, very enlivening. 
Oh it is the nicest room I know anywhere in its situ- 
ation . . . the back part veiled into a bedroom by 
tall curtains a la Greque (secondhand — the gift 
of our liberal fellow citizen L. L. Thaxter, Esq.) — 
and the rest of the room filled up with superb furni- 
ture, among which shine pre-eminent two sulphur 



58 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

colored chairs, a contribution from Brattleboro* 
— white curtains veil the windows, ditto the book- 
case. Over the floor spreads a many hued carpet, 
put down by the fair hands of Mr. T. W. Higgin- 
son. . . . Parker is the only person I see — there are 
only one or two others of my class here, and no 
others I care much about — though I have half a 
dozen visiting acquaintance. ... I lead a nice 
oysterlike life with occasional trips to Brookline and 
Boston. . . . Commons I like very much." 

To his mother who was anxious about her son's 
frugal diet, he wrote: — 

"As to commons you must be satisfied too, you 
rebellious little thing — don't I tell you that we have 
an unlimited supply of good milk and excellent 
bread, and have n't I lived the greater part of my life 
on bread and milk? There is no stinting; whatever 
we have at all, we have an unlimited quantity of: 
vegetables every day, potatoes, beans, squash, toma- 
toes: — nice Indian and tapioca puddings: meat 
every other day very good and well cooked — no- 
body complains of anything. . . . With regard to 
going to a boarding-house I should not like it now 
at all. ... I have never liked the relation between 
boarder and boardee and never should wish to try 
it." 

Later the faithful son reported : — 

"You will be sorry to hear that I have been disap- 
pointed in getting a Proctorship. There were a few 
vacancies and a great many applicants. I was sur- 




ANNE STORROW (AUNT NANCy) 



THE CALL TO PREACH 59 

prised and provoked at first ; and Mr. Channing who 
told me seemed surprised and sorry at my appearing 
so. The reason the others were appointed I suppose 
to be that they were considered more needy charac- 
ters than I — so much for dressing like a gentleman y 
my dear. ... It will not alter my plans and may be 
useful to me as obliging me to pinch, etc., more than 
I otherwise should. . . . 

"My life here is dreadfully prosaic — that is, in 
many respects I often feel as if I would give heaps of 
gold to be able to see something from my window 
that ^imagination can rest on — the view of the col- 
lege yard was sweet to be sure. ... If I could go into 
the woods and see a single flower I should n't care. ,, 

"I have sighed, and sighed in vain/' Wentworth 
confided to his journal, "considering the expense, 
for a tin hat [bathtub] and a big sponge." When 
Aunt Nancy sent him five dollars for clothing, he 
noted, "Determined to apply it to a velvet waist- 
coat"; but he thought better of it and said, "I am 
using part of Aunt Nancy's $5 to buy a tin hat — 
$3." This luxury being secured, he went still further 
and wrote: — 

"To-day I have taken quite a step. Resolved to go 
to the gymnasium. For $3 I can go three months. 
This is more than I like the idea of paying, but still 
it is worth Jt. I have considerable strength and ac- 
tivity to start with, and by 3 months' daily practice 
I can strengthen my constitution for lifelong use." 



60 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Poverty possessed no terrors for this independent 
youth, and only when he thought of marriage did 
he sigh for the traditional rich uncle. He wrote: " I 
think I could bear and even enjoy poverty were I 
alone. I mean real, pinching poverty." And again, 
triumphantly, " I am an independent individual with 
a clear income of $60 to be doubled after this year." 
But he soon found ways to increase this incredible 
income by copying, making profiles (perhaps the 
black paper silhouettes then in vogue), doing work 
connected with surveying for his brother Waldo, and 
teaching a private pupil in town for half an hour 
daily. He wrote to his mother: — 

" I purpose giving the morning to study (par excel- 
lence), i.e., at present, languages — German, Greek 
& Italian, and the afternoon to other reading of 
various kinds — the evening when at home to read- 
ing, writing and so on. I am in my room all day 
pretty much, and find no difficulty in applying my 
mind — and no irksomeness, but rather a pleasure 
in reading and studying. . . . Although I need daily 
excitements, I can get along with very small ones — 
the post office, the reading room, the library at their 
regular hours each day are an all sufficient variety to 
me." 

But soon Higginson mentions a more momentous 

interest : — 

" I had the excitement of the great Abolition con- 
vention which I several times attended. Got some 



THE CALL TO PREACH 61 

settled views about abolition, and all but made a 
speech.' ' 

And later, — 

" I have got the run of slavery argumentation now 
and can talk Abolitionism pretty well." 

When the youth's anxious friends sought to re- 
strict his movements, he burst out in his journal 
with this protest : — 

"It seems that the interesting pack of blood- 
hounds denominated 'my friends' have reopened 
their musical mouths. . . . Oh confound the whole 
set of wretches — if they could get me stuck to a 
polar iceberg for five years surrounded by seals, 
penguins, and law books, they might perhaps be 
satisfied. . . . Oh words cannot express how intensely 
I sometimes wish I could be put into a tin box and 
rolled away under a barberry bush!" 

Wentworth continued the habit of taking long 
walks, seventeen miles after supper being once re- 
corded ; and he returned to his old pastime of kicking 
football in the evening, pleased to find that his 
running powers had increased. Skating on Fresh 
Pond still attracted him ; coasting was always to be 
had in Brookline; and there was the same fascina- 
tion in having long evening talks with Parker (now 
a law student) as in undergraduate days. 

Another diversion was attending mathematical 



62 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

examinations at Harvard, being still on the Examin- 
ing Board (at nineteen), and occasionally dining with 
the committee. In describing the committee exam- 
inations, the young visitor says: — 

"There are probably half a dozen in the present 
Senior class who know more by a good deal than I do 
now, or shall when I examine them. So I must go 
to the examinations and be satisfied with looking 
learned, which after all is all the Committee ever did 
when I was in College.' ' 

The journal records: — 

" I am studying away at a great rate and enjoying 
it especially. I do seek to gratify this craving for 
knowledge which will not let me rest. No kind of 
studying is anything but a pleasure to me." 

And in the student's enthusiasm, he exclaims: — 

"Oh the delicious pleasure of learning whatever 
there is to be learned." 

He continues : — 

"I am delighted to find my memory is becoming 
more retentive than ever before. The last year at 
Brookline gave me time to digest the immense weight 
of miscellaneous matter heaped on it from my earliest 
boyhood, and now I begin to study to very much 
more advantage and feel my powers of retention to 
be relied on." 

But in spite of his enjoyment of this solitary life, 
Wentworth occasionally mused : — 



THE CALL TO PREACH 63 

" I think on the whole that this life is not the right 
one for me — I cannot live alone. Solitude may be 
good for study sometimes, but not solitude in a 
crowd for a social-hearted person like me. Here in 
my own pleasant room I seldom feel it, but when 
outdoors I constantly feel the unpleasantness of hav- 
ing no common interests in the life I lead and that 
of others.' ' 

Again he chides himself for being too much of a 
recluse : — 

"What I want now most urgently is more of a 
controversial spirit, the will and the power always to 
pitch right into people and show 'em how foolishly 
they are thinking and acting, instead of my present 
spirit of being willing people should think what they 
please if they'll only leave me alone. The latter 
spirit will never do any good to the world and I hope 
it'll wear off." 

This anxiety would seem to have been needless, in 
the light of Higginson's later career. 

What his future might be was a fascinating if 
troublesome problem, and he often made such notes 
as these: — 

"What destiny is intended for me, I cannot tell — 
not to go in the beaten track I am sure. I cannot 
express how strongly I long to come out and obtain 
a working place among men. How my ability will 
second my wishes I know not, but some things are 
in every one's power — to live a true, sincere, 



64 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

earnest, independent life. Of this I think daily and 
hourly. . . . 

"I feel there is no man too small to be useful so 
he be true and bold. ... I am an enthusiast now, 
I know. So much the better. Whoever was in the 
highest degree useful without being such?" 

In these years of thought and study, Wentworth 
wrote many verses, some of which were published in 
periodicals. This led to the dream of being a poet. 
His few hymns which are included in American and 
English collections of sacred song and are still sung in 
churches were written at this time. One day, many 
years later, he met his Worcester contemporary, 
George F. Hoar, on the street, who asked him if he 
was the author of the hymn containing the lines — 

"And though most weak our efforts seem, 
Into one creed these thoughts to bind." 

Upon Mr. Higginson's assenting, Mr. Hoar said that 
he considered this hymn "the most complete state- 
ment of Christian doctrine that was ever made." 

In that early period the young man exclaimed, 
"Oh, heavens, what would I not give to know 
whether I really have that in me which will make a 
poet, or whether I deceive myself and only possess a 
mediocre talent." But later the dream vanished and 
he wrote: "The idea of poetic genius is now utterly 
foreign to me and I cannot conceive at all now the 



' 



THE CALL TO PREACH 65 

feeling that underlay my whole life two years ago. I 
must be content to enjoy instead of creating poetry.' ' 

On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, Went- 
worth wrote to his mother: — 

"I have repented of many things, but I never 
repented of my first poetical Effusion. If you are not 
familiar with the poem, I will sometime give you a 
copy. . . . 

1 ' The only additional ' great truth ' that occurs to 
me is this which it is strange I mentioned not before 
— that on Sunday next you will lose your last baby. 
Your youngest son will attain his majority! Shall 
you not have an ox roasted whole at Boscobel?" 

This was the name of the Brattleboro house. 

The poem referred to, written at the age of eight, 
ran thus : — 



"How sweet the morning air 
To those who early rise 
To gather flowers for their hair 
Before the sun is in the skies ! 



"The waterman waits, the waterman waits 
For somebody in his boat to glide : — 
A gentleman from Santa Fe 
Says, ' I '11 go in the boat with thee, 
If you with cents will contented be 
Then I'll go in the boat with thee!' " 

The plan of reviewing a book by Lydia Maria 
Child occurred to Higginson one winter evening. 



66 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

He got home late, and without a fire sat down and 
wrote until midnight. His satisfaction was great, 
for it seemed to him that he now saw the way to 
gratify his "longing to do something for the world," 
and wrote, "I feel as if a new world were opening 
before me and my work were now beginning." After- 
ward he met Lowell who told him what he was earn- 
ing by writing : — 

"Soon after the Year's Life was published, 
Graham wrote to him [Lowell] offering $10 per poem 
if he would publish there — This was afterwards 
raised to $20 and then $30 — now he thinks he could 
get $50. This encouraged me considerably." 

Once, the young critic sent "a box of gentians 
to Mrs. Child and carried a fine bunch up to Mrs. 
Maria Lowell in the evening. Spent an hour there. 
James and she are perfectly lovely together — she 
was never so sweet and angel-like in her maiden 
state as now when a wife." And again, describing a 
walk, he writes that he met "James Lowell and his 
moonlight maid — how closely I felt bound to them 
through the sonnets." Of a later visit at the Low- 
ells*, he wrote (September, 1846): — 

"The angel is thinner and paler and is destined to 
be wholly an angel ere long, I fear, but both were 
happy. . . . We talked Anti-Slavery and it was beau- 
tiful to see Maria with her woman angel nature plead 



THE CALL TO PREACH 67 

for charity and love even against James, that is, 
going farther than he, and as far as I could ask. This 
was delightful, but it was sad to me to feel we must 
lose her. ... I do not suppose there ever was known 
before anything so beautiful as this union. There 
have been many loving couples but never any where 
both units and union were so wonderful in character 
and mind. They excite in me a perfectly chivalrous 
feeling. I . . . should delight in . . . being where I 
could constantly watch them." 

To Miss Channing Wentworth dedicated his jour- 
nals and wrote her letters full of his thoughts, strug- 
gles, and aspirations. Having never had a brother 
or sister near enough in age to himself to be a confi- 
dant, he found this outlet a great relief. In his grati- 
tude he called his fiancee his " Commonplace Book," 
and was surprised that this epithet did not seem an 
endearing one to her. 

During the four years of their engagement, al- 
though it was suspended for one year, on account 
of Higginson's straitened finances, and while he was 
feeling his way into the future, their correspondence 
was voluminous, in spite of the fact that they often 
met. In one letter Wentworth thus warns the 
young lady against the difficulties she may have to 
encounter as his wife : — 

"Setting out, as I do, with an entire resolution 
never to be intimidated into shutting either my eyes 



68 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

or my mouth, it is proper to consider the chance of 
my falling out with the world." 

He adds : — 

"I have been worrying a great deal lately as to 
what is to be done for this preposterous world. . . . 

"The great reason why the real apostles of truth 
don't make any more impression is this — the mo- 
ment any person among us begins to broach any 
'new views' and intimate that all things aren't 
exactly right, the conservatives lose no time in hold- 
ing up their fingers and branding him as an unsafe 
person — fanatic, visionary, insane and all the rest 
of it — this has been the case with all reforms great 
and small and moreover there is often some ground 
for it because it is the enthusiastic (i.e. half cracked 
people) who begin all reforms. Mrs. Child you know 
has long been proscribed as an entirely unsafe person 
and as for Mr. Emerson and Mr. Alcott, it does n't 
do for a sober person even to think of them." 

Miss Channing was a disciple of James Freeman 
Clarke, and Higginson was thus led to attend his 
church. There under Dr. Clarke's influence he began 
to think of studying for the ministry. But he depre- 
cated haste and wrote to his betrothed, "I have 
declared my independence of this invariable law of 
our young men's sacrificing everything else to going 
ahead quick." 

Over this new project, Wentworth pondered long, 
now rejecting the plan as impossible, and again re- 



THE CALL TO PREACH 69 

considering. "How long halt ye," he despairingly 
asked himself, ' ' between two opinions. O, I am sorely 
puzzled and know not what to do. I cannot in action 
any more than in thought bear confinement — How 
then can I settle down into the quiet though noble 
duties of a minister. ... I crave action . . . un- 
bounded action. I love men passionately, I feel 
intensely their sufferings and short-comings and 
yearn to make all men brothers ... to help them to 
strive and conquer." And he sometimes wondered if 
choosing the Ministry at Large would solve the prob- 
lem. Another stumbling-block was theological doc- 
trine, and he hoped to find light by studying Sweden- 
borg. 

However, the die was presently cast in favor of the 
church, although Higginson still announced himself 
"a seeker and entirely unsettled." His family were 
delighted at the decision, and he found satisfactory 
quarters in a quiet corner of Divinity Hall, looking 
toward the sunset and close by the Palfrey woods. 
Here he boarded himself, having contrived a wire 
and tin cup arrangement for boiling water over his 
study-lamp in order to wash his breakfast and tea 
dishes. "I feel very proud of it," he wrote to Miss 
Channing. "You should hear the water sizzle! I 
could brew rum punch with ease." 

He rejoiced in his leafy surroundings, there being 



70 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

no house visible from his room, and wrote in March, 
1845, "I am so impatient for spring that I keep my 
windows open perpetually though it is generally 
cool, but the birds do pipe surpassingly. Soon the 
anemones will be here and my summer joys begin.' ' 

One of Wentworth's summer joys was a visit to 
Niagara with his mother and sisters. Before his first 
sight of the falls he said to himself, " There is more 
in this one second than in any other second of your 
life, young man!" But after looking at the cataract, 
the only words he could use were Fanny Kemble's, 
"I saw Niagara. O God, who can describe that 
sight!" 

While he was a divinity student Higginson's ex- 
penses for food were surprisingly small. His pen- 
cilled accounts report one dollar spent on food in 
a fortnight. He usually dined on Sunday at Dr. 
Channing's in Boston, but bread and milk formed 
his principal diet the rest of the week. Books were 
more attractive than food, and he wrote: "I am 
longing much for money to buy books [this was a 
lifelong want]. Books I want to read thoroughly I 
always want to have for my own, to annotate and 
mark." 

It was a relief to find that "the bonus to poor 
Divinity students amounts to almost as much as the 
proctors get, $100. This being the case, I need n't 



THE CALL TO PREACH 71 

take a proctorship. Just what I wanted. ... At 20 
before 6 a.m. the bell ding-dongs for prayers. I shall 
probably go to bed early and get up ditto/ ' 

As the young man looked forward to the duties 
of the ministry, a feeling of despondency sometimes 
came over him. 

"A pure earnest aim is not enough. Intellectual 
as well as moral armor must be bright for I know I 
shall have to sustain a warfare. I feel that if I do 
justice to my own powers (i.e., if I do my duty) I 
cannot remain in the background. . . . Preaching 
alone I should love, but I feel inwardly that some- 
thing more will be sought of me — An aesthetic life 
— how beautiful — but the life of a Reformer, a 
People's Guide 'battling for the right' — glorious, 
but, Oh how hard!" 

In these moments of doubt his ever solicitous mo- 
ther exhorted him to fresh courage and persever- 
ance. 

Through these years of study in Cambridge, 
Wentworth made frequent visits to Brattleboro, 
kept the family supplied with books, and suggested 
lists for the village book club. He was constantly 
adding to his own collections of books, and wrote, 
"My library is now becoming rather imposing." 

His principal companion in the school seems to 
have been Mr. Samuel Longfellow, brother of the 
poet, who was one year in advance of Wentworth. 



72 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

About this friend he said, "He is a beautiful soul, 
though there is a certain shadow of reserve about 
him. He spoke of his sister 'Mrs. Fanny' [Mrs. H. 
W. Longfellow]. I got a charming idea of the house- 
hold goddess. She was just Wordsworth's ' phantom 
of delight,' he said." While living in Divinity Hall 
Higginson formed a romantic attachment for a 
brilliant youth named Hurlbut, who was also a 
theological student. This friendship was destined 
to make a permanent impression on Wentworth's 
life, being freighted with much joy, but ending in 
deep sorrow. 

During his first year in the school, our young 
theologian came into contact with an older student 
named Greene who had great influence over him. 

" Now has this man of real genius come to be with 
me, to teach me humility, even toward my fellow- 
creatures. He has shown me the difference between 
real genius and a self-confident talent and the lesson 
though useful is severe. I do not believe a vainer 
person than I ever existed. I have never really felt 
that anything that a mortal can reach was beyond 
me. It was negative rather than positive. What my 
mission was to be I never knew. I only felt assured 
that 

' Despair ! thy name is written on 
The roll of common men ! ' 

was not meant for a lesson for nte." 



THE CALL TO PREACH 73 

In his long letters to Miss Channing, Higginson 
freely expressed his opinion on public questions, 
having already at twenty-one taken his lifelong 
stand as to the position of woman. 

" I do go for the rights of women as far as an equal 

education and an equal share in government goes 

I think it a monstrous absurdity to talk of a demo- 
cratic government and universal suffrage and yet 
exclude one-half the inhabitants without any ground 
of incapacity to plead. This is theoretical — practi- 
cally I have no doubt we should have much more 
principle in politics if woman had more share from 
her standard of right being higher than that of man. 
I think there is no possible argument on the other 
side excepting prejudice.' ' 

He was also then interested in the perennial prob- 
lem of the workingman and wrote, " I have read the 
articles on the organization of labor and were I a rich 
man would have 30,000 printed and distributed. ,, 
In the autumn of that year, 1845, he shared in the 
popular excitement about the proposed admission 
of Texas to the Union, attending meetings in Cam- 
bridge and at Faneuil Hall. He composed in verse a 
Texas rallying cry which appeared in "The Liberty 
News," in "The Free State Rally/' and in "The 
Liberator." He joined others in getting signatures 
to a petition called "Remonstrance against the 
Admission of Texas as a Slave State from 764 Inhab- 



74 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

itants of Wards i and 2 of the Town of Cambridge, 
Mass. (known as East Cambridge and Cambridge 
Port)." He records spending Sunday morning at 
home, the first time he had missed church-going for 
a year and a half, to prepare the petition. One hun- 
dred and sixty-six of the signatures were feminine 
and he pasted them all on a long strip of cloth and 
pressed them with a borrowed flatiron. Somewhat 
later he reported to his mother : — 

"At Cambridge we are in peace since the Texas 
petition thirteen feet long, double column, went 
off. ... I have pretty much concluded that a con- 
sistent Abolitionist (which last every person who 
thinks and feels must be whether nominally or not) 
must choose between the Liberty Party and the Dis- 
union Party. I don't like the dilemma at all, but fear 
I must come to it. . . . In the Liberty Bell which 
appears in a week at the Faneuil Hall Anti-Slavery 
Fair will be a sonnet of mine which may rather aston- 
ish some of my friends. Do not be afraid of seeing 
my name [signed] to pieces in papers." 

In the midst of these absorbing public interests 
the young student was agitated by personal problems ; 
and when his first year at the school was nearly over, 
he wrote this startling letter to his mother. It must 
have fallen like a bomb into quiet " Boscobel " : — 

"That the cup of your joy may not be more full 
than is good for you, I write to say that I have finally 



THE CALL TO PREACH 75 

made up my mind that I must leave the Divinity 
School. Entirely apart from the fact that instruc- 
tors, companions, and course of study have failed to 
interest or satisfy me — I am now convinced from a 
longer trial that I cannot obtain the equilibrium and 
peace of mind I need while I remain a member of it. 
"My faith in God is unshaken — as of Festus — 
1 with all his doubts he never doubted God ' — but 
God gives to some people a temperament much 
harder to deal with than others and while nineteen 
persons are going quietly on their way the twentieth 
is working hard under ground to make his way up to 
light and sunshine. . . . It is now as impossible to tell 
what the course of my life will be as when I was a 
babe and this is no subtile repining, but plain and 
simple." 

Higginson's plan was to resume solitary studies, 
thus escaping the routine of the school, but still living 
on in the same room, and this project he successfully 
carried out. During this period of self-banishment, 
he yet expected to make preaching his profession and 
sometimes cried out, "Oh, I keep asking who is there 
to go on with me to the aid of liberal Christianity." 

In this mental perplexity, he wrote to his fiancee : — 

M I feel that I have a right to some means of influ- 
ence. I should prefer poetry or in general, literature 
— because that lasts the longest, but should be con- 
tent with blacking boots, if I could only feel that to 
be the thing for which I was intended." 



76 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

The student's interest in political questions never 
flagged, and in January, 1846, he thus commits him- 
self to the disunion project: — 

"I might have recorded on my birthday or New 
Year's Day, my final self-enrollment in the ranks of 
the American Non-Jurors or Disunion Abolitionists 
and my determination not only not to vote for any 
officer who must take oath to support the U. S. 
Constitution, but also to use whatever means may 
lie in my power to promote the Dissolution of the 
Union. ... To Disunion I now subscribe in the full 
expectation that a time is coming which may expose 
to obloquy and danger even the most insignificant of 
the adherents to such a cause." 

In the following spring, describing to his mother 
a series of meetings, "Unitarian, Anti-Slavery, and 
Association," of which he had chiefly attended the 
Anti-Slavery ones, Higginson said : — 

"The most interesting and moving speech of all I 
have heard this week was by an old colored woman, 
Mrs. Thompson of Bangor, at one of the Anti-Slav- 
ery meetings in Faneuil Hall. This old lady rose 
among the crowd and began to speak — all stood up 
to gaze on her, but she undaunted fixed her eyes on 
the chairman and burst out into a most ardent, elo- 
quent and beautiful tribute of gratitude from herself 
and her race to Garrison ' who came truly in a dark 
hour' she said; her style was peculiar, tinctured 
strongly with methodistical expressions and scripture 






THE CALL TO PREACH y 7 

allusions, but her voice was clear and her language 
fluent and easy; and if ever a speech came straight 
from the heart of the speaker and went straight to 
the hearts of the hearers that was the one; no one 
could resist the impression and the tears came to 
many eyes ; there was a perfect hush while she spoke 
on without a single pause or taking her eyes from the 
chairman — and when she sat down there was a 
spontaneous burst of applause. It was a truly beau- 
tiful and noble scene, one which opened to one's view 
the prospect of a future when American Brother- 
hood shall be a reality of daily life and honour and 
respect be given where they are truly due." 

Wentworth now reported himself as peaceful and 
industrious, and " delving away at the Old Testa- 
ment" about which his mother had anxiously asked 
his opinion. He was still addicted to evening plunges 
in the river, and describes swimming at half-past 
eleven when it was high tide and he " found it beau- 
tiful to lie back on the water and gaze at the sky." 
So unconsciously he was even then preparing for his 
" Night in the Water" many years after when in 
command of the black regiment. The student wrote 
his Aunt Nancy : — 

"One feels strangely lingering on here in Cam- 
bridge after one's time is up — mine has been just 
ten years; I have staid here longer than any of my 
contemporaries — yet never have felt before as if I 
had staid too long, but now I do; people look at one 



78 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

with a kind of surprised glance — 'Well, are you still 
here? Is there no end to you ?'" 

As the year of solitary study drew to a close, the 
young recluse began to consider the importance "of 
being regularly authorized to preach and the desir- 
ableness of being associated with a special set of 
young men." These views were reenforced by a 
strong appeal from his class to rejoin them. He heard 
the class exercises when his special friends, Johnson, 
— whom he calls "my young hero and prophet," — 
Longfellow, and O. B. Frothingham were graduated, 
and Johnson's oration on this occasion had a pro- 
found effect upon him. He felt a strong desire to 
speak himself on next "Visitation Day" on the 
"Relation of the Clergy to Reform." 

In August, 1846, Higginson had a long talk with 
Dr. Francis, then dean of the school, about reenter- 
ing his class, which resulted in a letter to the Faculty 
of Theology, applying for readmission. In this the 
writer, speaking of himself in the third person, ex- 
plains his reason for withdrawal — the need of per- 
fect freedom : — 

"This freedom might have been destructive to 
others: it was the breath of life to him, He has now 
built up a Credo for himself, whose essential and 
leading points are so strong and clear that he can 
patiently leave minor ones for a time unsettled. He 



THE CALL TO PREACH 79 

has abandoned much that men call belief . . . while 
at the same time his confidence in mere intellect has 
waned and he has grown more and more disposed to 
see in Love and Spiritual Trust the only basis of 
Christian Life within or Christian Union without and 
he feels now that for himself he has a gospel to preach 
and is ready to preach it. He feels more and more 
each day the call upon the minister; and this makes 
him feel he has been best preparing himself by learn- 
ing to live. . . . Thus the result is to ask not • Have I 
learned?' but 'Have I grown?'" 

In the autumn, Wentworth writes to his mother : — 

"Am very glad to have rejoined the school. I find 
it altogether improved in the year of absence, a 
higher tone of spiritual life and more mental activity 
... a fine liberal spirit such as has never before 
prevailed. ... I am the only one who reads Ger- 
man. . . . Am busy on two dissertations — one on 
the erroneous views of the Scriptures — the other on 
the early history of the Trinity — both of which 
give an opportunity for original and ' unsound ' views. 
. . . Nothing keeps a man so fresh as abolitionism 
and kindred propensities, I observe." 

In a December letter he continues : — 

11 1 wrote an elaborate essay on the true use of the 
Scriptures — against attributing (practically) literal 
infallibility to any part of them, or setting them up 
as absolute Master of Reason and Conscience ; this ex- 
cited interest and we brought it up at the Friday even- 
ing debate where it was discussed for four evenings 



80 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

with animation ; one evening Elder Holland a Chris- 
tian minister from Buffalo was present and spoke. 
. . . He is considered one of the ablest men in the 
body, reads Emerson, etc. After the debate he in- 
quired with some anxiety whether 'that young 
man' (meaning me) 'ever expected to find a pulpit 
to preach in?' ... I look forward to preaching with 
great interest, it will be a serious work to me if I do 
it. But I have several doubts as to practical success 

— whether my view of Christ as in the highest sense 
a natural character, divine as being in the highest 
sense human, sent to aid men by living a higher spir- 
itual life, not in the character of an infallible teacher 
of any truth to the intellect, — working wondrous 
works by virtue of this inward spiritual energy — 
whether this will be acceptable to people. ... As for 
my particular poetical studies I never write a sen- 
tence without experiencing their benefit and look 
back with inexpressible satisfaction to one morning 
last spring when I shut Ecclesiastical History in 
despair (which I have often re-opened with pleas- 
ure) and rushed into the woods to read Browning's 
' Paracelsus ' ! . . . The Browning gospel is flourishing 

— my Bells and Pomegranates are half with Mr. L. 

[H. W. Longfellow] and half with the former is 

very ardent and has agreed to try and get Ticknor 
& Co. to republish them, which I before attempted.' ' 

Again : — 

" I have been writing more in these two months (or 
six weeks) than in the previous five years — I had 
begun to doubt whether I should ever feel the im- 



THE CALL TO PREACH 81 

pulse to write prose — now I have been manufactur- 
ing sermons and essays (to be read before the class) 
with the greatest readiness — all being crammed 
with as much thought as I can put into them. . . . 
I have a dozen subjects or so marked out — on all of 
which I have thoughts — but how will it be when 
these are used up? Will new ones come? How will it 
be when I have to write two a week and shall not be 
willing to dilute any?" 

The young thinker naturally felt some solicitude 
as the time approached for new responsibilities ; and 
the thought of being obliged to write weekly sermons 

— forcing himself to write when not feeling inspired 

— filled him with dismay. He also dreaded the neces- 
sity of preparing his graduation theme or " Visita- 
tion Part." In February, he preached two sermons 
at Walpole, New Hampshire, which met with much 
favor. The minister borrowed one of the sermons 
for his wife to read, and she gave it her highest en- 
dorsement, pronouncing it a "real Parker sermon!" 
His clear enunciation and expressive way of reading 
the hymns also won praise. About this time he had 
an invitation to preach at Newburyport. His mother 
was overjoyed at these successful beginnings and 
congratulated him on the " happy opening of his 
career." 

Wentworth was now reading Emerson's "Essays" 
and sometimes wondered why he read any other 



82 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

book. " I can't make up my mind," wrote the youth 
in one of his moments of doubt, "whether my radi- 
calisms will be the ruin of me or not." At any rate, 
these "isms" caused much dismay among his more 
conservative brothers and sisters. The question 
what the baby of the family might do next gave 
them many an uneasy moment. His brothers repre- 
sented the old-fashioned type of Unitarianism, and, 
though sympathizing with his abolition views, 
shook their anxious heads over his theory about 
women. The independent and sympathetic mother 
did her best to keep up with her younger son in the 
path he was striking out for himself; but even she 
asked in bewilderment, " You don't want women to 
vote, do you, or be lawyers, or go to Congress!" 

The son, never daunted, thus expressed his taste 
for individuality: — 

"I do not like family characteristics to prevail 

very strongly among brothers. Now the B s are 

not regarded as individuals, but as a batch of broth- 
ers and sons of Dr. B." 

Early in this year, Higginson had written to 
Samuel Johnson : — 

"I have made my debut at West Cambridge. I 
pleased the audience, I heard and did something 
towards satisfying myself that the pulpit is my voca- 
tion." 



THE CALL TO PREACH 83 

After delivering his visitation address on "Clergy 
and Reform," 1847, he wrote Miss Channing: — 

"I cannot tell you what a sensation my yester- 
day's words made — nor how exhausted and weary 
of soft speeches I got before night. All sorts of men 
from Dr. Parkman to Theo. Parker introduced 
themselves to me (some of them knew father) — and 
said all manner of things. . . . With Mr. Parker I 
had some excellent talk — he came out to hear me 
principally he said and was not disappointed — and 
he said some wise words of sympathy and encour- 
agement. . . . The Reformers were delighted. . . . 
One candid man . . . said . . . ' I must thank you 
for your sermon to us, though I feel that in so doing 
I condemn myself/ . . . Edward Hale came up . . . 
and said he had missed hearing me, but he was glad 
to hear there was somebody who was going to elec- 
trify the world. . . . Finally Uncle George [Channing] 
has offered to insert it whole in the Christian World. . . . 

"When I got through I felt entirely uncertain 
what would be thought of it — it seemed tremen- 
dously severe as I spoke it and I put in my fullest 
energy — but I have not heard a single complaint of 
it or objection of any sort!" 

Somewhat late the young reformer learned that 
his visitation speech had been, after all, "a rock of 
offence" to many. Yet this disapproval did not 
injure his prospects, as a pulpit was already await- 
ing him. 



VI 

IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 

In the summer of 1847, Wentworth Higginson, be- 
ing then twenty-three, accepted an invitation to 
become pastor of the First Religious Society of New- 
buryport. He wrote a friend : — 

" I think the pastoral relation will be interesting to 
me — and if I fail in it, it will be for want of time or 
skill, not of inclination. . . . Now I have fairly shaken 
myself free of the too fascinating home of all my past 
years — I do not believe any one ever clung to 
Cambridge as I have done." 

But the following extracts from another letter show 
that he soon became reconciled to the change: — 

"I do think we need transplanting, sometimes 
even I, — I grow tired of things and people. ... I 
think all we have to do with, houses, rooms, towns, 
&c. should have perpetual slight changes going on, 
that we may feel that they live and grow with us. 
. . . Aunt S.'s everlasting parlors are a weariness to 
my spirit — even pretty engravings do not bear the 
same places and the same cords for years." 

And his natural buoyancy, which never deserted 
him through life, led him to moralize thus: — 




THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 1 846 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 85 

"It does require a great deal to live in such a 
world — but the way to prepare for the worst is not 
to be constantly expecting it, but to be constantly 
sensible of the superabundance of beauty and good 
in the universe, a thought which is never for an 
instant out of my mind, and in view of which I can- 
not conceive of being overcome by anything/' 

In this courageous frame of mind, Mr. Higginson 
was ordained September 15. His friends Johnson 
and Hurlbut wrote hymns for the occasion. His 
cousin, Rev. William Henry Channing, preached 
the sermon, and Dr. James Freeman Clarke gave the 
charge. While the latter exhorted his young brother 
to reform by construction, not destruction, he urged 
him to speak scathing words of rebuke against the 
sin of slavery. Thus was the path marked out in 
which the new minister was not reluctant to walk 
and which finally made his position too hot to hold 
him. 

His marriage to Miss Channing took place Sep- 
tember 30, 1847, he having previously convinced the 
young woman that two healthy persons could keep 
house perfectly well without servants, and that house- 
work would never destroy real romance; and they 
began housekeeping on this plan. The economy 
practised by the newly married pair was amazing, 
and the following year Mr. Higginson summed up 
their financial status in this wise: — 



86 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"We have now no bill over $3 in Newburyport. 
We are amply provided for this year and the next 
must take care of itself. ... On looking back at our 
expenses, the clothing account surprises me most — 
our united expenses have never gone beyond $80, 
which is very little." 

These frugal habits pleased the young clergy- 
man's mother and she exhorted him: " Rise up mor- 
alist and preach frugality to the age!" And the son 
responded, "The most trying thing is this great big 
house. I pine for a nutshell." Yet he determined to 
make the best of unwonted luxury and wrote to his 
brother : — 

" I am fairly settled now in a lovely house, with a 
noble-hearted wife and a marvellous parish. . . . 

"You can hardly imagine how far off my dreamy 
Cambridge life now seems to me." 

In the spring, they rejoiced in a garden : — 

"Our sunny little garden is insane with tulips 
everywhere — appearing in the most unexpected 
and improper places." 

Of his parish, he wrote: — 

"They [the parishioners] manifest regard for us 
only by full and attentive presence at church — 
certainly the most agreeable way, but queer. Not a 
particle of petting. Rather afraid of us, in fact, Mary 
thinks — as if we were handsome spotted panthers, 
good to look at and roaring finely — something to 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 87 

be proud of, perhaps— but not to be approached 
incautiously, or too near; except by a few familiar 
ones. . . . 

" I find less to complain of and far more to enjoy 
in the ministry than I have ever anticipated: my 
people are thus far willing and impressible at least; 
I say whatever seems right, and they listen; I 
preached yesterday to about 400. ... If I can do my 
duty, there is much to be effected here. . . . 

" We met Mr. the richest man (about) in the 

Society ... he ere long proceeded to compliment 
me on ' the good whipping I gave them Sunday after- 
noon on Freedom of Speech. * ... I have not yet 
found one who approves the war or disapproves free 
speech on the minister's part and I begin to feel 
somewhat confident that they will stand the trials I 
have ready for them. ... I have talked very plainly 
in private." 

But in the midst of his satisfaction doubts oc- 
curred, and Wentworth wrote to his mother : — 

"Strive as I may, I still feel myself in a position to 
some extent artificial. ... I cannot reconcile myself 
to the recurring forms even of worship, still less those 
connected with church organization. I find no out- 
ward difficulty , but only inward ; this may decrease, 
but it looks more like increase." 

To his Aunt Nancy he confided that he sometimes 
felt "terribly false, . . . like Mr. Emerson with a 
hole in the heel of his stocking. (He refused to go to 
pay a visit on this account.) 'Why, nobody will 



88 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

know it/ urged his friend. 'I shall know it,' replied 
the sage, gently.' ' With prophetic foresight he 
added: "But as regards preaching proper, I have no 
sort of doubt of its being my mission — in some form 
or other — that is speaking to men, in the pulpit or 
elsewhere. . . . But enough of churches and preachers 
and future botherations; what trifles they all seem 
when Spring is opening and the tardy blue anemones 
are almost ready to open their blue eyes." 

Of his work outside the parish, he wrote: — 

"We are becoming somewhat more acquainted 
with the poor people here, which is to me very pain- 
ful work — unnatural I think, this charity — though 
necessary in our present imperfect state. It seems 
so much easier to prevent than to cure. This neces- 
sity of entering into the concerns of so many families 
(in sympathy if not in act) which is part of a minis- 
ter's duty is trying to me, — it is as much as I feel 
fitted for to steer my own course. It is n't because 
I sympathize too little but too much." 

This sympathy led him to take an active interest 
in the working-people and to concern himself about 
the long hours of labor of the factory girls. At the 
same time he interested himself in a magazine for 
their benefit with a title which he pronounced some- 
what uncouth, "The Mirror and Casket of Female 
Industry." 

Besides this local work, Mr. Higginson often 
preached and lectured in other places, spoke at anti- 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 89 

slavery and temperance meetings, and wrote for 
various newspapers. He was also drawn into politics. 
In the autumn of 1848, he accepted the nomination 
of the Free Soil Party for Congress and wrote thus 
to his brother: — 

"You have probably seen my nomination for 
Congress. I did all I could to get Whittier nomi- 
nated, but he obstinately declined, and it was he 
who proposed my name. . . . 

"Perhaps I should not have started my [local] 
newspaper column had I expected this nomination 
— but now I am in for it, I have no thought of 
flinching. It will hurt my popularity in Newbury- 
port for they call it ambition &c. — but I trust that 
time will do me justice. ... I expect to 'stump' a 
little and but little." 

To the same he wrote, October 11, 1848: — 

" I shall be glad when the Presidential Campaign 
is over. I spoke at Haverhill last Monday to a fine 
large audience — the best I have seen, and the best 
speech. I always knew I had a fountain of extem- 
pore matter in me somewhere — but did not expect 
to find it tapped so suddenly. ... I am getting used 
to seeing my name at the Corners of the Streets. In 
juvenile days that would have seemed beyond the 
horizon of earthly ambition, but it don't seem to tell 
for so much now. I don't think Morleena Ken wigs 
herself would be tempted to be proud, could she 
actually have the experience. 

"Free Soil doesn't prosper much just in this 



90 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

town — it will take longer than in most places. My 
good people have not yet uttered a croak — nor will 
they," a prediction which was not realized. 

The young politician, in gauging his prospect of 
success wrote, " There is of course no chance of my 
being elected; but I am sincerely desirous that Mr. 

should be defeated." And he recalled with 

some amusement "how carefully good President 
Quincy used to forbid our showing any political 
preferences on public occasions, even on the popular 
side." 

The watchful mother, who had warned her son 
against Theodore Parker's radical sermons, thus 
wrote of his activity in politics : — 

"And so you are fairly entered again on a politi- 
cal career — safe — because on the unpopular side. 
Therefore I don't complain." 

And later she wrote to his wife : — 

"I have been thinking of him this winter going 
from Dan to Beersheba on his Mission and concluded 
[that] with his utter contempt of all wrappings he 
must freeze." 

"I am engaged in several new enterprises," wrote 
Higginson to Samuel Longfellow who was abroad; 
' ' one is or was the attempt to bring back the Free 
Soil Party to self-control and consistency from the 
more fascinating paths of coalition and conquest; 
this has failed already ; and I have only seen my name 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 91 

in many newspapers, with unwelcome Whig compli- 
ments and melancholy Free Soil ones; and no good 
done but warning and reproof. The other may be 
more successful — it is to induce Massachusetts to 
follow the example of Maine, and either have laws 
that can do something, or none at all, in the way of 
checking the liquor traffic. But as you are now in 
England where all teetotallers take to drinking, and 
going soon to the Continent where all forget that they 
ever were teetotallers, you will not care about this, 
though we are really entering on a very important 
revival." 

Temperance was one of the vital causes in which 
the young minister interested himself with some 
practical results. His wife wrote: — 

"W.'s Temperance Sermon which he repeated last 
Sunday eve — has already done good — three estab- 
lishments are to be closed in consequence." 

Of this interest Mr. Higginson wrote to his mother 
in 1851: — 

"I have been persuaded to speak on Temperance 
Every Sunday for a few weeks to come and after 
Christmas shall perhaps take the offer made me by 
our State Central Committee and become their Sec- 
retary for a month or so, during the agitation of the 
Maine Law . . . the Committee are ready to take me 
at any time on handsome terms, and but for the 
Evening School and a small piece of literary work I 
have for this month, I might perhaps go at once. . . . 



92 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"Last Tuesday and Wednesday I went to the 
State Temperance Convention; the best part of a 
Convention is in the preliminary meeting when the 
wires are pulled and all the real fighting done. I was 
in the thick of it." 

He adds: — 

"A week ago to-day I lectured at Concord on the 
Maine Laws. ... I had a queer time going to Con- 
cord — part in stage and part in sleigh and was upset 
once in each, together with a slight concussion on the 
railroad, coming back." 

The clergyman's pen as well as his voice was busy 
and he never lost an opportunity to help what was 
called the "woman question." One of the prominent 
workers in this cause wrote to him, in later years, that 
he had ' ' done great service by bringing to the neces- 
sary hard work of unpopular reforms the urbanity of 
literary culture and social talent," and he has been 
called a " harbinger of successful causes." In 1849, 
at a meeting in Boston of a society of literary men 
called the Town and Country Club, he nominated 
a woman for membership, and gave as his reason, 
"Because it seemed a rare opportunity for assert- 
ing a valuable principle, viz., the union of the sexes 
in all intellectual aims and instrumentalities." 
This club, as Mr. Higginson wrote later, was "valu- 
able as an attempt to organize intellectual Bos- 
ton in the days of its most seething mental ac- 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 93 

tivity"; and "died, like so many other good things, 
in endeavoring to be born." The effort to include 
women members failed, but he persisted in similar 
cases, as when much later he accomplished the admis- 
sion of Julia Ward Howe to the Academy of Arts 
and Sciences. 

Of all the movements which claimed the young 
reformer's support, that of anti-slavery was nearest 
his heart. He wrote to his mother: — 

1 i We have had another interesting beggar, viz. a col- 
ored brother of gigantic proportions, named Foster, 
who is raising money for an excellent Manual Labor 
School he has started (for fugitive slaves and others) 
in Michigan. He spent the night here and was very 
good company ; told plenty of stories about slaves and 
slave-catchers; a man of superior intelligence, infor- 
mation and humor. ... I entirely forgot he was 
black, — (though I never have much colorphobia). ,, 

Later, when the prejudice against the race seemed 
increasing, he wrote, "The worst trait of the Ameri- 
can race seems to me this infernal colorphobia." 

Mrs. Higginson always regarded her husband's 
philanthropies with whimsical — if sympathetic — 
amusement, and once exclaimed, "Why do the 
insane always come to you!" 

As to Mr. Higginson's sermons, his wife wrote to 
the family at Brattleboro: — 



94 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"The Parish are really beginning to appreciate W. 
somewhat. His last two Sermons were so much 
liked they insisted upon their being published — and 
he gave his consent. They are upon The Tongue. 11 

Another sermon on "Merchants" attracted much 
attention, and a friend begged the preacher to 
write and print a lecture on the same subject and 
"sow it broadcast/' This advice was taken, for later 
he said, " I have just had one of the most real honors 
I have ever had; the reprinting of nearly all my 
Lecture on Merchants in Hunt's Merchant's Maga- 
zine." 

To the children of his parish, the minister preached 
sermons once a month, writing to his mother, "I 
want to do something for them and this is much 
easier to me than Sunday School addresses. The 
little things seem to listen and enjoy it." 

A letter recently received from one of these very 
children, now a wife and mother, says that Mr. Hig- 
ginson was connected with many of the most joyous 
experiences of her childhood; "for while he was an 
inspiration to the young people of the town, he was 
a genuine playmate to us. Many were the bright 
winter afternoons when we went coasting together on 
the long hills back of the town, when we had no doubt 
he enjoyed himself as much as we did." She adds 
that the children listened with delight to the juve- 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 95 

nile sermons, feeling that they were spoken to them 
by a comrade, and she gives a vivid description of a 
Christmas tree which he had for poor children, an 
unusual and exciting event in those days. One small 
child who had spent a day with the minister told his 
parents that Mr. Higginson was a " real boy " ; which 
meed of- praise the latter reported with glee to his 
mother. 

The young clergyman gathered around him also a 
remarkable bevy of maidens who studied English 
poetry with him and for whom he planned a course of 
Shakespeare readings. These young girls assisted 
him in the evening school which he established for 
working-people. This evening school was one of the 
first in the country, and the experiment led to similar 
schools in other States. Some of these Mr. Higginson 
aided in establishing, as the one in Dover, New 
Hampshire. In his carefully kept records of the 
evening schools of Newburyport are the names of 
"male" and "female" pupils with their various 
employments and the factories where they worked. 
Even then most of the men were of foreign extrac- 
tion, and instruction seems to have been given prin- 
cipally in the three "R's." One of the young teach- 
ers who helped in these classes was Harriet Prescott, 
now Mrs. Spofford. She writes, "Mr. Higginson was 
like a great archangel to all of us then and there 



96 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

were so many of us ! Coming into the humdrum life 
of the town, he was like some one from another 
star"; and incidentally she speaks of his great per- 
sonal beauty. This last impression was confirmed by 
Wendell Phillips, who, while listening to a lecture 
by Higginson, said to his companion, "Is it not 
glorious to be handsome !" 

Among other things it fell to the lot of the clerical 
pair to entertain various men and women of note 
who came to Newburyport to lecture. In the winter 
of 1848, Mr. Higginson wrote to his mother of Pro- 
fessor Agassiz : — 

" He is a charming companion, very joyous, gentle 
and modest, always ready and willing to communi- 
cate his endless information about all invisible 
things. . . . 

"Mr. Emerson comes on Friday and will stop 
here — as will also probably the minor star, Dr. 
Holmes, the week after. 'T is a nice way of seeing 
great people, for they can't well be otherwise than 
complaisant when you rescue them from a dirty 
tavern and give them hominy for breakfast." 

And Mrs. Higginson added: — 

"Friday night that enormous Charles Sumner 
stretched his ponderous form of seven feet in length 
under our roof. He has not very good manners — he 
always sits in the rocking chair, gapes almost con- 
stantly without any attempt at concealment. . . . 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 97 

But he is a true moral reformer which is a good 
thing." 

Apropos of these visitors the following extracts are 
taken from Mr. Higginson's letters to his mother: — 

"I had the pleasure week before last of making 
acquaintance with Henry Ward Beecher who came 
here to lecture. . . . Something very fresh and noble 
about him, and he showed vigor and richness of 
mind, rather than subtlety and refined culture; per- 
fectly genial and simple and practical too. It was so 
much pleasanter to see him in this informal way. . . ." 

" A most charming individual has been here in the 
shape of a female Anti-Slavery lecturer — Miss Lucy 
Stone by name — a little meek-looking Quakerish 
body, with the sweetest, modest manners and yet as 
unshrinking and self-possessed as a loaded cannon/ ' 

"At Plymouth I heard some pretty things. One is 
about Laura Bridgman — that a lady whom she 
visited in Duxbury read her the whole of Evangeline 
on her fingers! Laura enjoyed it excessively and has 
talked about it a great deal. She wants to be as good 
as the heroine and wonders whether Evangeline 
would have kicked a cat — that animal being her 



aversion.' ' 



After hearing Kossuth, he wrote: — 

"No such series of speeches was ever delivered in 
so short a space by one man, since the world began; 
and when you add the fact of the foreign language, it 
becomes so astonishing that you cannot remember 



98 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

how astonishing it is. There seems absolutely no 
limit to the resources of his eloquence, his mastery 
over language, or his power of meeting the occasion ; 
his career from the moment he landed has been one 
long intellectual triumph. It seems more like the 
Chronicle of the Cid than any more modern story — 
a prolonged tournament in which the victor is always 
the same." 

And after meeting Thoreau : — 

"In Concord I went to see Thoreau; he is more 
human and polite than I supposed, and said he had 
heard Mr. Emerson speak of me; he is a little bronzed 
spare man ; he makes lead pencils with his father on 
Monday and Tuesday and was in the midst of work. 
On other days he surveys land, both mathematically 
and meditatively; lays out houselots in Haverhill 
and in the moon. He talks sententiously and origi- 
nally ; his manner is the most unvarying facsimile of 
Mr. Emerson's., but his thoughts are quite his own. 
. . . He does not seem particularly affected by ap- 
plause, but rather by his own natural egotism. I 
find nobody who enjoys his book as I do (this I did 
not tell him). ... I saw his mother, a gaunt and 
elderly Abolitionist who had read my Thanksgiving 
sermon with comfort, and told me anecdotes of 
'Henry's' ways which are more domestic and filial 
than one would suppose.' ' 

While at Newburyport, Higginson renewed his 
acquaintance with Whittier, having first met him 
when a boy of nineteen. 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 99 

" I spent a day in Amesbury and saw Whittier. . . . 
Dark, slender, bald, blackhaired, kind, calm, flash- 
ing eyed, keen, somewhat narrow; not commanding, 
but interesting. Evidently injured by politics, easily 
content with limited views; yet sympathetic and 
(probably) generous. Lives in an appropriate cot- 
tage yet very simple. A queer compound of Yankee- 
Quaker and Yankee-hero and Yankee-poet; the 
nationality everywhere. He would whittle, no doubt. 
But his eye gleamed with a soft, beautiful tenderness 
as he came to the door and remarked on the cold 
sunset sky. . . . He lives with an odd Quaker-dressed 
mother, who haunted the back room with knitting 
and spectacles; — square and mild, as the elderly 
of her persuasion always are. Also his sister who 
talked with us, a queer little sprightly woman, re- 
puted very brilliant and looking so. We laughed a 
good deal, (he has much humour) and she was 
funny; for she has, you see, a tremendous nose, very 
solid and peculiar, and her wits seem all to be dodging 
behind it and when you look into one eye that seems 
very demure they are all sparkling in the other — 
and vice versa. She is half an invalid." 

Boston was near enough for occasional visits, and 
after attending a concert by Jenny Lind, Mr. Hig- 
ginson wrote to his mother in November, 1851 : — 

" I was very ardent at the time, partly because the 
Boston audience seemed so peculiarly icy. There was 
not a spark of enthusiasm from beginning to end. . . . 

" There she stood and looked out over the people 



ioo THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

in a half-smiling, thoughtful sort of way, swaying 
herself a little to and fro, not graceful, but sweet and 
gentle, tall, slender, with a very unbecoming white 
dress, and white roses in her hair, — face like all the 
pictures. I could conceive what a 'new sensation' 
she might have been to hacknied opera-goers in 
London. . . . [She sang] a wonderful Bugle Song, the 
notes dying away in the distance. This last was 
perfectly incredible — you listen and listen and at 
last become perfectly bewildered and decide that the 
notes will never end but go with you always.' ' 

One of the valuable friendships formed at this 
period was that with David Wasson, whom Mr. 
Higginson dubbed "the most interesting person 
I know." This radical young parson had recently 
been ordained at the neighboring town of Bradford 
(or Groveland), to Mr. Higginson's surprise, who 
thought Wasson too heretical for any council to 
admit. Mr. F. B. Sanborn remembers encounter- 
ing in that region a country youth who summed 
up the two independent clergymen thus: "Wal, he's 
[Wasson] a sort of infidel ; he says he don't take much 
stock in th' old saints; Mist' Hinkerson [Higginson], 
daown t' the Port, 's the sweetest saint I ever knew." 

After attending some of the May anniversary 
meetings, Mr. Higginson reported that he had 
spoken his mind freely about the emptiness of Uni- 
tarian gatherings. Some present did not approve, 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 101 

and other elders who were there said it" should have 

been said long ago and had been long felt. I am very 

sure that good will come of what I said : they need a 

note of discord to break the general monotony of the 

meetings." To Mr. Wasson he confided some of his 

professional anxieties : — 

"Nov. 17, 1851. 

"Something must be done with this great Ortho- 
dox church; no question of that; the how and what, 
alas, are more difficult of decision, and beyond my 
gifts and training at least. . . . Who is to pilot the 
ship, pray, if each Palinurus jumps overboard and 
strikes out for shore on his own account. . . . 

" I wish you would go and see . . . Sam Johnson of 
Salem, . . . who can help many troubles by his sheer 
unconsciousness of the possibility of having them." 

Doubts as to his own success in his chosen pro- 
fession sometimes recurred. In his second year of 
preaching, he mused : — 

" I am weary of these lives that end early and leave 
only blossoms, not fruit, for a remembrance. Unless 
it is worth while to have me stay long enough on 
earth to produce something, it is not worth while to 
be remembered at all. Was this in Keats* mind, 
when he chose his epitaph ' Here lies one whose name 
was writ in water'? Should I go before I have borne 
not flowers only but fruit, I would have no biography 
written and have my epitaph 

"T is not a life! 
'T is but a piece of childhood thrown away!"^ 



102 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Later, after one of the annual family Thanksgiv- 
ing parties in! Brookline, Wentworth thus denned 
himself to his mother: — 

"If not exactly one of the Hans Andersen's ugly 
ducks, I have always been an odd chicken. I have 
always been at other people's Thanksgiving parties 
and not my own. I have been a snubbed little boy 
among an elder cousinly circle, I have been a Lord of 
Misrule among a younger; but not until we are all 
born again into some sphere of Saturn or Uranus 
shall I find a Thanksgiving party of contemporaries. 
Still I am not sure but this office of connecting-link 
has as many pleasures and as few pains as any other." 

At this time, Mr. Higginson wrote few letters, ex- 
cept these filial ones and said to a neglected corres- 
pondent : — 

"People don't lecture and edit and keep school 
for 135 factory girls for nothing, and cannot expect 
to have much time left afterwards to answer bright 
letters." 

He reports clearing about twelve dollars from a 
lecture, and consenting to have some of his sermons 
printed because the people wanted them, and adds, 
"My lecture arrangements, poor people, etc., have 
kept me going down town so much that M. thinks 
I have begun to practice physic." 

"All is prosperous thus far," wrote the hopeful 
son. "I preached my most (preachable) theological 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 103 

heresies yesterday and have heard nothing yet but 
applause. ... It is the place for me and I think there 
is now but a small chance of a reaction against me — ■ 
as I have already taken ground against the War 
(they say) and my next Sunday's blast will be but 
a following up of that." 

The preacher evidently did not foresee that these 
frank utterances would antagonize his hearers. In 
reference to an anti-slavery convention at Newbury- 
port, he wrote: — 

"I read the notice of the Convention and said I 
should preach on Slavery in the afternoon — in con- 
nexion with it — which I did, on the text, ' Behold 
the men who have turned the world upside down are 
come hither also ' giving a free spoken blast, showing 
. . . the apathy . . . and the duties of the North — 
and finally recommending (indirectly) my hearers 
to go to the Convention in the Evening — which 
many did. . . . There has been much discussion on 
the subject this week and I feel entirely satisfied 
with the success of my effort — which has not, so far 
as I know, excited any opposition. At all events I 
have defined my position." 

The pro-slavery sentiment was very strong in 
Newburyport, and Mr. Higginson's parish contained 
sundry sea-captains who saw no sin in returning 
fugitive slaves to their owners. Later one of these 
very men took Sims, the runaway slave, back to 
Savannah. Mr. Higginson's frequent sermons on the 



104 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

abolition of slavery and his activity in furthering the 
crusade caused growing discontent in the parish; 
although it is said that even these unwelcome ser- 
mons were so intensely interesting that the dissatis- 
fied members of the society were his most constant 
hearers. But the opposition to his political views 
finally led to his resignation, after preaching for two 
years. " An empty pulpit/ ' he said to his people, 
"has often preached louder than a living minister.' ' 
He thus stated the event to his mother (September 6, 
1849): — 

"The case was perfectly simple. Mr. W. distinctly 
stated that they had no fault to find with me per- 
sonally, they liked and respected me; they were al- 
ways interested in my preaching; they had no com- 
plaint as to pastoral matters; the only thing he had 
ever heard mentioned was Slavery and Politics; my 
position as an Abolitionist they could not bear. This, 
he admitted, could not be altered; and he tacitly 
recognized that I had but one course to pursue." 

To his old friend, Sam Johnson, he wrote at the 
same time : — 

"Dear but agitated Brother, — 

"I intended to write you, but for procrastination 
and the knowledge that ill news travel fast. Mine is 
good though. I had resolved to release myself from 
the whole thing next year, for various reasons. But 
the discontents of the Pleasant St. ' upper ten ' . . . 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 105 

have led to it now. I said so Sunday before last, to 
the surprise of many and the tears of all women, poor 
men, young men, Democrats and Come-outers. A 
kind of reaction has followed since, and now all the 
rest are shedding tears — still they have accepted 
my resignation only not to take effect for 6 months. 
With a free church I could carry off half the society 
and many urge it — but I will not ... I intend to 
give lectures here by and by or something of that 
sort. We are never going to leave these parts and 
are to board for the present at Mrs. Curson's, Arti- 
choke Mills, 3 miles from town and the loveliest 
place on earth. . . . 

"Not a dozen are really opposed to me, but they 
have all the wealth. Oh Christian Church!" 

One member of the congregation wrote (Novem- 
ber 7, 1849) these words to a relative of the dislodged 
pastor : — 

"After hearing his two exquisite sermons — in the 
morning 'Rejoice in the Lord' — in the afternoon 
4 It doth not yet appear' I felt profoundly sad at the 
thought of his leaving the pulpit. . . . We cannot 
spare such gifts/' 

During the last six months of his stay in the 
parish, Mr. Higginson wrote to a friend: — 

"The beautiful words ' pastor' and ' minister ' have 
become almost offensive; but the good thing they 
used to denote has not. . . . 

"These last months have something of pain for 
me, though they go very fast." 



106 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

When this trying period was over, the Higginsons 
removed to a charming rural spot embowered in 
trees where the Merrimac and Artichoke Rivers 
meet. Here they shared the home of certain distant 
family connections who held their right to the place 
as long as they ground corn once a year. In this re- 
treat the banished couple not only produced their 
own butter, but even sent some to Brattleboro, for 
Mr. Higginson wrote to his mother : — 

"This is not my first churning, nor did I do all of 
this, for it took a great while and I had not time, but 
week before last I did it all and this time most of it, 
so you may safely call it my butter with some twirls 
of the crank from M. likewise. 

"You don't see such butter every day!" 

Soon he added : — 

" It is quite as beautiful here as was reported and 
our feet are fast growing to the ground." From 
this earthly paradise "in the ecstasy of June" he 
wrote : — 

"The soft west wind blows into my window, rich 
with lingering apple blossoms and half blown 
clover . . . thrushes* and bobolinks' and robins' 
notes. . . . 

"In these lovely Spring days with the blue Mer- 
rimack waves dancing before me, the world seems 
very young, and all evil short-lived.' \ 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 107 

It is said in Newburyport that the young minister 
on leaving there burned all his unpublished sermons. 
However this may be, he preached in a hall after he 
had, to use his own words, " preached himself out of 
his pulpit." One of his Newburyport friends says 
that the majority of his parish, those who agreed 
with him, followed him to this hall, and those who 
remained in the church went to his evening meetings. 
This lady, who was then one of the adoring young 
people, says, "We sat on the steps of the platform 
from which he spoke, and worshipped him instead of 
God." 

"It is pleasant to me to feel," he wrote, "that I 
have resumed my post of public scold. I have an- 
nounced about 12 lectures, on every other Sunday 
Evening." 

He remained in Newburyport two years after his 
resignation, interesting himself as before in the wel- 
fare of the people. He kept up his evening classes, 
walking back and forth to the town, made frequent 
visits to the public schools and served on the school 
committee. The pupils looked up to him with great 
reverence and accepted his advice as final. He was 
one of a committee of three which offered a prize of 
ten dollars each for the best essay and the best poem. 
Harriet Prescott wrote the successful essay on 
"Hamlet," and remembers how she retired to her 



108 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

room in deep emotion after receiving from Mr. Hig- 
ginson's hands her gold eagle in a little mesh purse. 

His practical interest in libraries seems from this 
record to have begun here. 

"We have about $1250 subscribed and hope to get 
$1500 in town and $500 to $1000 out of town — 
besides books. By January 1 I hope the Library will 
go into operation ; but we have a temporary place of 
deposit now." 

In answer to his mother's entreaties, he wrote: — 

" Thanks for your letter and its excellent advice. 
Certainly I shall never edit a paper — not go solely 
into politics ; and as for companions I am always too 
thankful for real ones to care what garments they 
wear, — ■ Bob ' my principal crony, at the Mills, has 
rather nondescript ones at present, but will probably 
come to pantaloons in time. . . . Did I tell you of 
seeing them (the Whittiers) at the Mills with Miss 
4 Grace Greenwood ' the poetess &c. whom I had the 
privilege of rowing on the Artichoke?" 

While in Newburyport, he renewed his intimacy, 
begun in college days with Levi Thaxter. The latter 
had announced that he was looking for some lonely 
place where he could, like Demosthenes, declaim to 
the waves. " I have suggested," said Mr. Higginson, 
"the Isles of Shoals. They are peopled by a queer 
race of fishermen." Neither of the friends could have 
foreseen that the result of this suggestion would be 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 109 

the discovery of Thaxter's future wife. Later Went- 
worth wrote to his mother : — 

"We had a nice visit from Levi, he brought the 
loveliest seaweed and gave a glowing account of 
Appledore." 

But Mrs. Higginson's version of the visit was 
somewhat different, for she declared: — 

"Last Wednesday Levi appeared with a cod and 
several Salt Mackerel (awful things) ; we are trying 
to give them away." 

After an expedition to the Isles of Shoals, where 
he met for the first time the fair young Celia Leigh- 
ton, with her necklace of sea-shells, Mr. Higginson 
wrote : — 

"There is no passion so beguiling as boating and 
I could sympathize with Levi in that; Levi has still 
his beautiful boat The Lady of Shalott. ... As to his 
other Lady I grew more and more attracted to the 
sea maiden; Celia has a lovely nature, simple, true, 
confiding, brave and of perfect serenity of temper. . . . 
And the more I think of her, and remember that she 
is but fifteen; the more I feel that there is no predict- 
ing what she may not turn out." 

In writing nearly a year later of the Thaxter mar- 
riage, Mr. Higginson said : — 

"Characteristically enough the great event was 
decided on, the priest sent for to the mainland and 
the ceremony performed all in one day!" 



no THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

The interludes of play, however, were brief and in- 
frequent, and the days more than full of manifold 
tasks. To his over-anxious mother, the dutiful son 
reported his doings thus: — 

"I have just been writing a sheet of Maxims for 
Maidens going to Normal School. Two of my chil- 
dren — they were little girls when I came here — are 
bound thither in a fortnight ... to let two such loco- 
motives as these two girls go off to one small town 
. . . without any manual of wisdom would be obvi- 
ously unsafe ; so I have written them a series of little 
Maxims like General Washington's. This I say partly 
to frighten you, because you believe such singular 
things about me that I have no doubt you suppose 
that I advise them to take boxing lessons every 
Sunday morning . . . but I don't." 

Again he wrote : — 

" I was amused yesterday by reading in a note of 
Dr. Young's Chronicles that when Francis Higgin- 
son, the ancient, became a non-conformist 'he was 
accordingly excluded from his pulpit ; but a lecture- 
ship was established for him, in which he was main- 
tained by the voluntary contributions of the inhab- 
itants'; so I have good precedents." 

Having given up his editorial column in the 
Newburyport paper, Higginson undertook to write 
two articles a week for the " Commonwealth" to 
appear as editorials, for which he was promised two 
dollars and a half per column. His early connection 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT in 

with this paper was brief; he was impatient at the 
misprints in his contributions, and complained: — 

11 This makes five articles of mine in your unhappy 
paper and there has been some diabolical erratum in 
each one. I shall try no further." 

It is needless to say that these diaboli continued to 
annoy the author through life. 

It was while in Newburyport that, with the coop- 
eration of Samuel Longfellow, Mr. Higginson under- 
took to edit a volume of sea poems called ' ' Thalatta." 
The editors apparently thought of bringing this 
volume out at the same time that "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" appeared, as Higginson wrote, "Thalatta is 
at a standstill because Mrs. Stowe exhausts all the 
paper mills." 

The young author was aroused from these peace- 
ful pursuits by the enactment of the Fugitive Slave 
Law, September 18, 1850. After reading the details 
of what he called " this most cruel and unrighteous 
bill," he appealed to his old schoolmate, Charles 
Devens, United States Marshal, writing a burning 
letter of expostulation from which this passage is 

quoted : — 

"Newburyport, Sep. 29, 1850. 

". . . For myself there is something in the thought 
of assisting to return to slavery a man guilty of no 
crime but a colored skin [at which] every thought of 



ii2 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

my nature rebels in . . . horror. I think not now of 
the escaped slave, though he has all my sympathies, 
but of the free men and women who are destined to 
suffer for this act. And I almost feel as if the nation 
of which we have boasted were sunk in the dust for- 
ever, now that justice and humanity are gone; and as 
if the 19th century were the darkest of all the ages." 

In April, 1851, Mr. Higginson, as a member of the 
Boston Vigilance Committee, received a summons to 
aid in rescuing Sims, the first fugitive slave captured 
in Boston and returned to slavery. Higginson was 
at this time a stockholder in the yacht Flirt, which 
was nominally for rent, but actually kept cruising 
about the coast in readiness to rescue slaves from 
incoming vessels or to kidnap their pursuers. 

A crowded meeting was held in Tremont Temple, 
where Higginson made a vehement speech urging 
instant action. To this advice a subsequent speaker, 
Charles Mayo Ellis, strongly objected. Apropos of 
these speeches, Mr. Higginson's sister-in-law, Miss 
Barbara Channing, wrote: — 

"I went to see Anne Phillips [Mrs. Wendell 
Phillips], who is enthusiastic about W. [Wentworth] 
— she said her hopes of Sims' rescue rested upon 
him, and if he had not been followed in his splendid 
speech at the Temple by a man who threw cold water 
upon his coals, he would have sent hundreds to the 
Court House." 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 113 

Reporting the comments upon this eventful meet- 
ing to his mother, Wentworth quoted Anson Bur- 
lingame, a prominent politician, who said: — 

" It [Higginson's] was the most remarkable speech 
he ever heard; it held the audience spellbound; it 
was more remarkable for what it kept back and 
hinted at than what it said ; there was a fire in the 
eye that made him tremble. 

" W. Phillips said that Dr. Howe said 'we were on 
the eve of a revolution with that speech — nothing 
but Ellis's speech saved us/ 

" Yet it was very short and I was conscious of no 
such effects. In fact I walked in a dream all that 
week, but it tested me to the utmost. . . . Meetings 
where every one present had to be identified and 
every window closed; and plans that involved risk- 
ing one's life and reputation solitary against law, 
state and nation." 

From an account of the attempted rescue, written 
by Mr. Higginson in 1890, these extracts are taken: 

"All projects for the rescue of fugitive slaves were 
embarrassed in those days by the fact that the most 
trusted abolitionist leaders were largely non-resist- 
ants in principle, and were unwilling to take part in 
any actual outbreak, while other well-wishers, such 
as Horace Mann, were utterly opposed to any viola- 
tion of the law. ... A plan was hastily formed by 
four or five abolitionists for the rescue of Sims. The 
plan was to communicate with the prisoner through 
a colored clergyman, and get him to consent to jump 



ii4 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

from his window in the third story upon a pile of mat- 
tresses to be placed below, a carriage being placed in 
readiness to take him away. . . . We were not sure 
that Sims would have the courage to do this, rather 
than go back to certain slavery. ... At any rate 
the mattresses were got and placed in a lawyer's 
office in Court Square. Great pains were taken to 
keep the plan a secret and I well remember the sink- 
ing of the heart with which I saw, on walking 
through Court Square on the evening planned for 
the enterprise, that masons were at work putting 
iron bars in the window of Sims' cell. The whole plan 
was thus frustrated." 

In this despairing mood the ardent young Aboli- 
tionist found some comfort in the attitude of his 
fellow clergymen, for he wrote: — 

"I heard from Sam Longfellow a few weeks since 
that he was thinking of leaving Fall River. Among 
'settled' divines the game of Puss-in-the-corner 
seems growing harder and hotter. The Fugitive 
Slave Law has mightily stimulated it. But how finely 
our ' Unitarian ' brethren have done and are doing, 
on that point. 1 1 shows the clergy to be a grade above 
politicians, after all, that the capitalists have less 
power to muzzle the Reverends than the Honorables. 
Perhaps you read an editorial of mine in the ' Com- 
monwealth,' some 2 months ago, on Sims' case. It 
was Dr. Walker who said to me, apropos de Sims, 
that if these things continued 'the pulpit would 
become a refuge for scoundrels' / Don't of course 



IN AND OUT OF THE PULPIT 115 

imagine my mind at all anxious or perplexed. I have 
plenty to occupy me and the current of thought may 
float me as it pleases." 

Although Mr. Higginson had fancied his preaching 
days were over, he received in 1852 an invitation to 
take charge of a Free Church in Worcester, an organ- 
ization which the influence of Theodore Parker had 
just brought into existence. This society was com- 
posed of radicals of all descriptions and as a whole 
was imbued with strong anti-slavery sentiments. 
Mr. Higginson wrote to a friend : — 

"They want me to stay at Worcester where there 
are 600 come-outers and a very thriving city and a 
clear Free Soil majority and no anti-slavery preach- 
ing, and 40 conventions in a year." 

"Rather to my own surprise," he wrote from 
Worcester in May, 1852, "I find myself likely to 
assume the charge of a new Free Church in this city, 
on a plan resembling Mr. Parker's in Boston more 
nearly than any other. This is a very thriving and 
active place, materially, intellectually and morally; 
there is as much radicalism here as at Lynn, but 
more varied, more cultivated, and more balanced 
by an opposing force; a very attractive place, and 
this free church movement a very strong one. I feel 
a sort of duty toward it, because I see clearly the 
need and the possibility of infusing more reverence 
and piety into this comeouterism of New England, to 
which I belong by nature; and this seems a good 
place to do it. The congregation is very large and 



n6 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

they desire very much that I should come. And it 
will very probably be so." 

Later he told his mother: — 

"I was yesterday offered $1200 to give up 
Worcester and be Secretary to the Temperance 
Committee for another year. . . . There is a feeling 
of the necessity for a vigilant superintendence while 
the law is being enforced. I of course declined." 

His mother replied that she would let him choose 
his own way of doing good, not even saying, as 
Judge Story's mother did: "Now, Jo, I've sat up 
and tended you many a night when you were a Baby, 
and don't you Dare not to be a great Man." She 
added that she did not even care to have him a 
"great Man," except as greatness was achieved by 
interesting himself in the good of those within his 
reach. "Steer clear your own way," she exclaimed, 
"and the result I am sure will be right. . . . You 
object to beginning Life anew — remember you are 
not yet 30!" 



VII 

THE FREE CHURCH 

On the eve of Mr. Higginson's departure from New- 
buryport, this resolution was adopted at a Free Soil 
caucus in that town : — 

" Resolved, That in the departure of one from this 
community whose purity of life, earnestness of pur- 
pose, restless energy, and remarkable abilities are 
universally acknowledged, we suffer a severe and an 
irreparable loss, and that our regret at the removal 
of the Rev. T. W. Higginson to Worcester is relieved 
only by the consideration that wherever he may be 
he will not cease in his efforts for the elevation of 
mankind.' ' 

Shortly before removing his household goods the 
faithful chronicler reported : — 

"Here we are still, wind and water-bound. . . . 
We are thoroughly packed and living on two or three 
chairs and a borrowed plate. M. thinks it is like 
a picnic. But I feel more as if it were a part of a 
menagerie, waiting to be transported across the 
country, when the great wagon is ready. We are 
exhibited in Worcester next." 

The Higginsons were accompanied on their jour- 
ney by "kit in a basket" and a stout Irish damsel 



n8 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

who had been accustomed to doing housework for 
twenty- three truckmen, and who it was thought 
could probably take care of "kit and us." The new 
abode, which commanded a view of Wachusett, was 
not in the most select part of the town, nor was the 
new congregation drawn from circles of the elite. 
But undisturbed by these facts Mr. Higginson thus 
described the Worcester home: — 

"Nice little house, in a charming part of the town 
. . . nice tangled jungle of a small garden, with 
peach trees that carry one nearer the Mills than any- 
thing else. ... I never knew what the love of one's 
own vegetables might be. I have a great dislike to 
tomatoes and yet I linger over the great red crea- 
tures, and nip off leaves to give them sun and treat 
them as tenderly as kitty. 

"... Close by us ... is Mr. Brown, a tailor, 
quite a remarkable person I think, very original and 
agreeable, and rather the wit of the city; I have 
ridden, walked, and sailed with him with great satis- 
faction. In fact I find the merits of the masculine 
side of human nature rather coming uppermost here, 
quite unlike Newburyport. . . . 

"People look busier and happier here . . . there 
is much more air of country too, the main street is 
filled all day with country wagons, and you buy 
your fire wood from the carts. . . . The Hall 
[Horticultural] is nearly or quite as large as the 
Universalist Church in Newburyport and is always 
well filled in the morning and crowded in the evening; 



THE FREE CHURCH 119 

everything prospers in the Free Church and I like 
it very much. The people are a very wide-awake set; 
and we have a neighboring parishioner in Bloomer 
dress who sends us squash pies and alarms Mrs. H. 
continually. . . . Indeed the recognized respect- 
abilities of the town are quite willing to honor us 
occasionally in the evening.' ' 

"Sept. 23. To-day is cattle-show. I have always 
wished to live in a town where this happened and 
have been wandering about this morning and enjoy- 
ing the country people. . . . More country people 
than I knew existed, enough to farm the whole solar 
system, I should think !" 

The new minister preached his own installation 
sermon and wrote to his mother in reference to it : — 

"The 1300 copies have been scattered far and 
wide, and met with favor [here] and elsewhere 
among various people. . . . The Boston Universalist 
Trumpet has denounced it violently and then 
eagerly borrowed all its Anti-Orthodox thunder. . . . 

" I have just had a singular epistle on my sermon 

from a Dr. of Philadelphia, a distinguished 

Anti-Slavery man and writer generally; his wife 
charitably adds at the end that her husband is 
slightly delirious when he is feverish, and M. thinks 
the explanation was quite needful." 

About this sermon Mr. Higginson received letters 
from all parts of the country and newspaper notices 
of equally miscellaneous origin. His mother was 



120 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

somewhat aghast at the radical views propounded 
in the discourse, and wondered what would be said 
of a document "so bold, original, and independent." 
Early in his new career, she offered her son this bit 
of advice, — "As to your admiring females, don't 
let your head be turned!" 

Mr. Higginson's intense love of children enabled 
him to reach the little people in unusual ways. His 
Worcester Sunday-School is thus described in a 
letter to the writer by an eyewitness : — 

" It was unique, not at all modelled after the con- 
ventional type where the scholars are divided into 
classes and recite lessons to the teachers. He was 
himself the only teacher. He told them stories illus- 
trating some simple moral principle — Truth, Gen- 
erosity, Love, and Loyalty; talking familiarly with 
them of the perplexities which even children often 
suffer from, in deciding between Right and Wrong. 
These little talks were delightful to listen to, they 
were so simple and clear and impressive." 

But companionship with the children was not 
confined to Sundays, for he "enticed a select circle 
of pet little girls to play Puss-in-the-corner on the 
green after tea." "I am plunging," he told his 
mother, "into parish visiting with great pleasure. 
It is rich to see the small children." In referring to 
one child, he said, "The little darling . . . showed 
me her dolly, with both legs broken off. It was a 



THE FREE CHURCH 121 

young lady doll, but 'He's broken his legs,' said she 

— l he has to walk on his drawers. 1 . . . 'But/ she 
added hopefully — ' one of 'em is growing out again 

— / saw it!' Her name is Alice and she and her 
sister play Mr. Higginson!" 

The young clergyman recorded in his Worcester 
journal that his only sorrow was "the absence of 
children to one whose passion for them is so rare 
and profound. ... I try to pass for a sober and 
respectable man, but there is really no sentimental 
school-girl whose demand for being loved is greater 
or more comprehensive than mine — it makes me 
uncomfortable to be for five minutes in the room 
with a strange child without winning it to love me." 

The project of a Christmas tree delighted the Free 
Church people, and Mr. Higginson appealed to one 
of his former Newburyport parishioners for help: 
"I thought perhaps your mother and E. would gild 
some eggs for me and send them to Boston by and by. 
I shall want all manner of little duds for the chil- 
dren/ ' After this successful event, it was found that 
"There were over 150 children (including about 20 
colored children — invited guests) . Where they all 
came from I don't know, but everybody who could 
claim eleventh cousinship to the Free Church came 
in. . . . Ever since that Tree we have been the 
most sociable parish in town." 



122 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

" Would you like to look in at the Free Church ?" 
wrote Mr. Higginson to his young friend, Harriet 
Prescott, May, 1854. "The people are bright and 
earnest, rather than cultivated. There is a tradi- 
tion of a progressive improvement in the bonnets, o' 
evenings, since the first summer; but I doubt if we 
can bear this test of increased social distinction. 
Worcester is a great thoroughfare, and there are 
always many strangers, and many Nicodemuses 
there are, who come by night only." — "We are 
well," he reported to his mother, "and I am only too 
busy; too busy to read, which is the greatest trial. 
. . . And inwardly, my transplantation to this new 
soil has enriched and strengthened me immeasur- 
ably; and given me many steps toward maturity." 

He always craved books and more books, but the 
actual purchase of one was a luxury. With a little 
money sent him by his Aunt Nancy, he bought Mrs. 
Jameson's " Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Mem- 
ories, and Fancies," and told his aunt, " I shall write 
very carefully in the beginning that it was a present, 
so that my parishioners and friends may not think 
it my own extravagance, in these hard times." Cer- 
tain favorite books, such as Jane Austen's novels, 
Scott's " Pirate," and Thoreau's "Week on the Con- 
cord and Merrimack Rivers," Mr. Higginson usually 
read once a year. 



THE FREE CHURCH 123 

Four years of his ministry at the Free Church had 
gone by when the president of the organization 
wrote to the clergyman's mother, that, after listen- 
ing to his preaching, "common sermons appear weak 
and stale, and our people will not go to hear them. ,, 
He added that something in her son's appearance 
and manner "called out the masses." 

As a matter of course the newcomer interested 
himself in the schools, and was placed on the school 
committee. Reporting one of the meetings of this 
body he said triumphantly, "We raised all the female 
teachers' salaries." But for defending the right of 
a Roman Catholic pupil to use the version of Scrip- 
ture approved by his parents he was dismissed from 
the board. He wrote to his mother, " I am half glad 
and half sorry that the Know-nothings have dropped 
me from the School Committee." Public opinion 
changed, however, and he was not only reinstated, 
but one of his companions on the later board was 
a Roman Catholic priest. 

Never in Mr. Higginson's long life did he abandon 
his custom of fearless protest by voice or pen against 
anything which seemed to him wrong or unjust. 
Anonymous letters of abuse were speedily consigned 
to the waste basket; words of criticism or rebuke 
he received calmly, and kept on his chosen course. 
His equanimity was seldom disturbed, but when 



124 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

confronted by what he considered a great wrong or 
injustice, anger could come in a mighty flash. 

In his journals of that period, Mr. Higginson 
speaks of the " untamable gipsy element in me which 
gives me instant sympathy with every desperate 
adventure. . . . Never did I hear of anything dare- 
devil without wishing to leave all else and do it. . . . 
I never read of but one thing which thoroughly came 
up to my idea of enjoyment, and that was the 
Charge of the Six Hundred. All the rest of existence 
would I freely give for one such hour." This was 
written soon after the actual event. Thirteen years 
later, Colonel Higginson added this pencilled note to 
the above: "The war slaked this appetite to some 
extent — but it will never die out/' 

An occasional note of discontent appears in the 
diaries, as when he complains : — 

"All I ask of fate is — Give me one occasion worth 
bursting the door for — an opportunity to get 
beyond this boy's play. . . . Till then my life, 
frittered away in little cares and efforts for the sick, 
sad and sinful, is not worth the chronicling. . . . 
I never remember to have rested my cares on any 
earthly being — all with whom I have ever associ- 
ated have rested theirs on me." 

But the habitual frame of mind of this "incorrigi- 
ble optimist," as he was called in later life, was 



THE FREE CHURCH 125 

expressed in a letter to his mother when he was 
thirty-three: — 

"My birthdays pass by almost uncounted, for I 
never feel any older; indeed in these last years I feel 
a sort of exuberance of life, and love of action and 
adventure, which seem more like 23 than 33. I think 
the one great possession of my life has been this 
sunny vigor of nature and unfailing animal spirits, 
which have carried me buoyantly over everything so 
far, and which I am sure I inherited from you. And 
many as are my other causes of gratitude, this seems 
the greatest." 

The ardent friendship between Higginson and 
Hurlbut, begun when they were both theological 
students and continued into these Worcester years, 
was destined to end in sorrow. After coolness began 
to separate the friends, Mr. Higginson still wrote to 
Hurlbut once a month, but scarcely ever received 
a reply. "Still, O changing child," he exclaimed, 
"out of the depths of my charity I still believe in you 
and out of the depths of my heart I still love you." 
Their letters were more like those between man and 
woman than between two men. Hurlbut's letters — 
still preserved — are always brilliant, often affection- 
ate, sometimes full of rollicking fun. One of them be- 
gins, "The unfaithful to the unforgetting — greeting." 
In answer to a young friend's question, Mr. Higgin- 
son wrote this account of the romantic friendship : — 



126 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"[I have had] one terrible disappointment. You 
asked me, a while ago, and with some apparent 
shrinking, if I had ever had any very intimate friend. 
I do not wonder that you ask, for you have seen so 
little evidence of such intimacy. My child, I have 
never had but one; all others have been only acquaint- 
ances, though I have always had a profusion of 
those. But I never loved but one male friend with 
passion — and for him my love had no bounds — all 
that my natural fastidiousness and cautious reserve 
kept from others I poured on him; to say that I 
would have died for him was nothing. I lived for 
him; it was easy to do it, for there never was but 
one such person; never have I met such another all 
gifted, all accomplished, all fascinating person; some 
men were jealous of him, some women distrusted 
him ; all the rest he fascinated. . . . He knew every- 
thing in advance of study, he could do everything at 
the first trial. In travelling I have been waylaid by 
utter strangers who saw me with him, and who hav- 
ing talked with him five minutes could not rest with- 
out learning who this wondrous creature was. To 
everybody he was an astonishment — to me he was 
a delight — we lived together at Cambridge like 
Warrington and Pendennis (for he was younger 
than I, and yet how barren I seemed compared to 
him!). To me, moreover, he was always noble and 
sweet, he loved me truly and generously — and I 
on the other hand when clouds came around his good 
name and at last utterly swallowed him I clung to 
him — for years. . . . My eyes were opened — too 
late to save him — and he was lost to me forever. 



THE FREE CHURCH 127 

. . . And yet all his crime is an utter moral weak- 
ness, joined with gifts too brilliant for anything but 
a strong moral nature to carry steadily. . . . 

"One good which I have gained even from this 
loss [lack of intimate friends] is that I have learned 
to stand alone, free from cliques, and parties, taking 
my own responsibilities and keeping my own 
counsel." 

Apropos of this independence of outside sym- 
pathy, he wrote in the diary of i860, " While I have 
M.'s unequalled brilliancy for a perpetual stimulus, 
I need none from others." 

"Hurlbut's downfall is the hardest thing of all," 
Mr. Higginson once said when alluding to the priva- 
tions and disappointments of life. In happier mood, 
he wrote: "For myself, the universe is all clear and 
sweet; nor do I see why it should not be so, to all 
healthy natures. . . . My own faith is simply and 
solely Natural Religion. To me Jesus is a brother 
and the Bible a book." 

The craving for larger opportunities was some- 
what relieved by lecturing in other towns; and be- 
sides 'rhese outlets, Mr. Higginson frequently made 
stirring speeches at Free Soil, Temperance, and Anti- 
Slavery conventions. In his regular chronicles to his 
mother he reported that Worcester was very gay, 
but that his own evenings were engaged in public 
speaking. He also preached in pulpits other than his 



128 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

own. These trips often took him some distance from 
home, and he wrote from Niagara: — 

"... My Congregation was good, including Mr. 
Barnutn, whose autobiography I came very near 
unconsciously referring to. In the afternoon I spoke 
at one of a series of remarkable meetings for free 
talk on theological subjects which Mr. May started 
in a public hall. All sorts of persons take part, 
Methodists, Jews, Catholics, &c. and no one can 
speak but ten minutes.' ' 

These absences from home not only gave a needed 
change, but took the young man among various 
interesting people. He wrote to his mother, after lec- 
turing in Concord, that he had Mr. Emerson for an 
auditor "which made me nearly dumb at first. . . ." 

"Last Saturday I was in Boston [Jan. 1853] and 
went to see no less a person than Mr. Thackeray — 
not as lion but as lecturer. We wanted him here for 
a new association and offered him $500 for 6 lectures 
— which he declined ; he was very frank about it, 
saying it was more than he could get in England: 
but he could get more in other cities; in Providence 
$800 for three lectures! 

"He is six feet four, at least, very sweet and manly, 
with a large head and bushy gray hair, almost white; 
looks 55. He has very little English hoarseness or 
awkward breadth of voice; a very good voice and 
enunciation; and no hauteur or coldness; was 
laboriously anxious to show me that he meant me 
no discourtesy by refusing our offer/ ' 



THE FREE CHURCH 129 

He adds that Thackeray's greatest desire in this 
country was to see Theodore Parker. 

A saving quality through life was Mr. Higginson's 
keen sense of the ludicrous. He wrote to his Aunt 

Nancy : — 

"Worcester, June 29, 1858. 

" I spoke in Springfield on Sunday, to the Spiritual- 
ists so called. My name was paraded in the streets 
in the largest capitals I ever had as the Rev. 
T. W. H. 'the eminent clergyman, popular author 
( ! !) and eloquent lecturer.' Directly over it were the 
remains of a theatrical handbill in large letters 
'The Fool of the Family.' " 

Describing a pilgrimage of young men to Concord, 
he says: — 

"No one had any acquaintance with Mr. Emer- 
son except a certain Frank Sanborn, a remarkable 
young poetic youth, formerly farmer and shoemaker, 
more than six feet high. ... He is a Junior and 
one of those who walked to Watertown when I 
preached there." 

And again : — 

"Last Friday night I went to Concord to an Anti- 
Slavery tea-party, where I spoke, together with the 
Lieut. Governor. Mrs. Emerson was there with 
her fine daughters — (R. W. E. being at the West) 
— Elizabeth Hoar, looking very noble — Thoreau 
and his mother and sister, and many other people 
of more or (especially) less note. . . . The Lieut. 



130 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Governor . . . said . . . slavery was a subject to 
which he never had paid much attention — see what 
it is to be absorbed in the larger interests of life." 

To Worcester there came from time to time people 
whom it was a delight to meet. "Last week," wrote 
Mr. Higginson, "Mr. Emerson was here and gave 
one of his old style of lectures, rich and delicious, he 
staid here, and I never liked him so much; he had all 
his invariable gentleness and graciousness." 

At another time he writes, "To-day I have had 
a tolerably good time. Tea with Alice and Phoebe 
Cary, the latter a dumpy jolly milkmaid, the former 
rather fine and superior." 

Of the actress, Charlotte Cushman, whom Mr. 
Higginson introduced to a Worcester audience by 
reading a letter describing her, he wrote to Harriet 
Prescott : — 

"What a wonder she is! That magnificent vigor 
and vital heat of hers is enough to redeem her native 
land forever from the charge of producing sickly 
and lifeless women. ... I was careful what I read, 
but there was one little sentence which described 
her so perfectly, I read on, but first I asked Miss 

, 'Will she blush?* and the good great creature 

broke in herself in her hearty uproarious way, ' Nary 
blush' quoth she, shaking her wide brows merrily 
at me. . . . 

"Her acting affected me infinitely beyond Rachel, 



THE FREE CHURCH 131 

though I thought the latter beyond anything; per- 
haps I saw C. C. in her greatest part — Queen 
Katherine; but I remember Rachel's death scene as 
the climax of acting, while in the last scene of this, 
it was as if my own mother was sinking and dying 
before me ; if I had another, thought it was of the 
wickedness of having a crowd of people to see all 
this. Where she put her person and all the abun- 
dance of her life and left nothing but that frail wasted 
shell of humanity, no thought could tell; she was 
seventy years old and reduced to the weight of a 
child. I felt as if I would have given worlds to be 
able to look away for a moment and yet I could not. 
"Then I saw her in comedy . . . the fun was on 
the same large scale with everything else, and carried 
every one along irresistibly." 

One day the young clergyman encountered Henry 
Ward Beecher on the street " looking fresh and whole- 
some as a great Baldwin apple. . . ." 

"I had in one hand," wrote Mr. Higginson, "a 
box of strawberries, a large box, and 2 pasteboard 
boxes, and in the other an umbrella. He said, 'You 
are as badly off as I was in Boston t'other day, when 
I met Wendell Phillips. I saw a great red lobster on 
a stall — a thing I had n't seen since I was a boy ' 
(as if he had ever ceased to be), 'but in N.Y. they 
are not sold boiled. So I bought it and carried it 
with me to the Railroad Station, but presently I 
saw a much bigger one and bought that too. It was 
so big the claw would n't hold it and it dropped, and 



132 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

then I held it by the other claw and that broke too 
and it dropped again and as I had just succeeded in 
picking it all up, two lobsters, two claws and all, I 
looked up — and there was Wendell Phillips and 
two ladies!' 

"He says he repays himself for overwork during 
the rest of the year, by six weeks of total inaction 
in the summer — no man is saved, he says, except 
by his inconsistencies. I told him he had laid up a 
large assurance of salvation in that line, to which he 
heartily agreed." 

In 1855, Mr. Higginson ventured on an unusually 
extended lecture trip. He reported to his wife: — 

" 1 am too soft-hearted for a Lecturer and cannot 
bear to take money out of people's pockets. I wish 
I were as tough as old John Pierpont, who never 
relents, and insisted on $10 more than the $30 paid 
at Rochester ; while I refunded $5 — my audience 
being about as large — but not worth the money 
they offered me. . . . 

"An Anti-Slavery Lecturer is better off than a 
mere Lyceum lecturer in this — that he is greeted 
with an enthusiasm of the heart and not merely of 
the head. ... I have also seen rather a queer 
placard from Skaneateles which announces me as 
'leader of the forlorn-hope from Worcester.' 

11 1 had a pathetic scene at Syracuse with the dear- 
est little pair of quaint rosy German children. . . . 
I bought a ball of parched corn and molasses candy 
... for them and they looked demure delight, try- 
ing in vain to discover how to eat it — I watched 



THE FREE CHURCH 133 

them till their wicked father came along, as ignorant 
as they were, and examined it in vain till at last it 
broke in his fingers and he threw it down and trotted 
them hastily away! I watched it from a distance, 
powerless and desolate, till the queer little anti- 
quities disappeared." 

In Syracuse he encountered Horace Greeley, who 
"was observed by all, and people tried to make the 
newsboys sell him his own life." In a letter from this 
place, Mr. Higginson says: — 

" I am writing on the office desk and am constantly 
taken for the landlord. A man has just come up and 
whispered confidentially, 'A lot of first rate segars 
I'd like to sell you, Sir.' 'Thank you, Sir, I don't 
smoke,'|I said without looking up. 'Ah, 7 said he 
rather astonished, 'ain't you the landlord of this 
here house?' 'No, 1 said I, shuddering. — Next a 
man indignant at not having been waked in time for 
his train — but happily the real landlord has just 
come in — a man in ruffled shirt and two seal rings." 

Although his lectures at that time could not have 
been very remunerative, he rejoiced in working, and 
in working all the time. He wrote to his wife while 
on this very trip : — 

"Like your father, and other very busy persons 
I suppose, I have the most intense dread of ennui. I 
very seldom suffer from the thing itself — but when 
I look forward and see a space of time which I cannot 



134 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

easily use to advantage, it gives me a sort of suffo- 
cating sensation/' 

Lecturers in those days were apt to encounter 
hardships and discomforts — snowstorms delaying 
trains and preventing the keeping of engagements. 
Once Mr. Higginson wrote from Toledo in a most 
perplexed frame of mind, after missing various con- 
nections and mourning the loss of twenty-five 
dollars : — 

" Here I am spending Sunday in a city of absolute 
strangers in a wild snowstorm, in a rather forlorn 
hotel from whose windows no house is visible, but 
only a few sheds with a dirty pig or two, then a 
frozen river and a bleak uninhabited shore behind. 
... I doubt not that here also there are Abolition- 
ists and Women's Rights people who would welcome 
me, could I only get at them." 

At another time, when attending certain suffrage 
meetings in New York city, he wrote : — 

"This morning our Woman's Suffrage Convention 
began — I being President thereof; think of me in 
that big Hall ! We had a very successful beginning — 
large numbers. . . . Rev. Antoinette [Brown] is a 
soft, gentle-looking person, youthful, and 'nervo- 
lymphatic ' — quite unlike most of the Woman's 
Rights women. Lucy Stone is staying in the house 
with me and more charming than ever. ... I am 
willing to have women preach, if they will do it as 
much better than average men as she [Antoinette 



THE FREE CHURCH 135 

Brown] does. As for Lucy Stone, I admire and love 
her more every day." 

Of the success of this convention, Mr. Higginson's 
mother wrote: "And altogether you have been 
decidedly the great gun of the New York meeting. 
What a singular position for a Higginson ! ! ' ' 

From Philadelphia, where he attended a similar 
convention, he wrote to his wife: ■ — 

"We have had a very good meeting so far. I am 
staying at Edward Hopper's, a sturdy son of old 
Isaac (Mrs. E. H. being Lucretia Mott's daughter). 
I wear dear old Isaac's slippers and dressing-gown 
when I go to the bathroom in the morning and shave 
with his razor afterwards. . . . 

"There is a medical student here named Or a 
Moon who beats Hattie Hosmer altogether. She is 
a Virginian, wears pistols and smokes; has a season 
ticket at the theatre and the pistol-gallery; rather a 
formidable result of the business — yet such there 
must be." 

About this visit, one of his letters says: — 

"I have really had a most charming time. . . . 
Plain Friends by the dozen, male and female, would 
come up and say, 'Well, Thomas Higginson, I am 
glad to see thee at last, I have often heard of thee 
and read thy words.' . . . 

"How shall I describe to you Lucretia Mott . . . 
the most brilliant eyes. Such a face and such a regal 
erectness! Nobody else ever stood upright before. 



136 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

She said but little in the meetings, but that so clear 
and sagacious and wise; and there was such an 
instinct of her superiority, that she ruled like a queen 
on the platform, and when she looked as if she de- 
sired anything we all sprang to see what it might be. 
Then to see her at her house — at her long table in 
the great dining-room, eighteen at table (and filled 
twice over, one day) — she at one end and her quiet, 
sensible, manly husband, James Mott, at the other; 
a perpetual Thanksgiving Day; her children and 
their partners beside her, and all looking up to her 
so admiringly. . . .*' 

To his mother he wrote : — 

"Lucy Stone of course was the real presiding 
genius [at the Convention], dear little stainless saint 
that she is; but I was very much struck with the 
character and ability shown by the women." 

When this lady was about to lecture in Brattleboro, 
Mr. Higginson thus besought his family: — 

"My principal object in now writing is to beg all 
of you, who will, to go and hear Lucy Stone speak. 
.. . . She is simply one of the noblest and gentlest 
persons whom I know; with her homely face and 
her little Bloomerized-Quakerish person — and her 
delicious voice. . . . Lucy wears them [bloomers] 
for health she avers, being exposed to storms and 
wind and snowdrifts in her wanderings." 

At the time of the gentle reformer's marriage in 
1855, Mr. Higginson wrote to his mother: — 




LUCY STONE, 1 855 



THE FREE CHURCH 137 

" Guess what wedding we are going to next — on 
May Day . . . dear Lucy Stone's!! . . . I am glad 
the world should see her as a wife and mother. Still 
there was something so powerful and beautiful in 
that lonely life of hers, nothing in history more so. 
... I spent several hours with her in Boston last 
week. . . . She said, 'You will laugh when I tell 
you what I came to Boston for, to buy a wedding 
dress and to put my little property into the hands 
of trustees, so that my husband shall not control it ; 
think what a thing that is, for a woman to have to 
do! But I am determined that it shall be held by 
a married woman in some way, so my sister is a 
trustee.' Then she added, 'Harry says (Mr. Black- 
well) that I ought to be very thankful that a wo- 
man has thus much freedom, but that is like tell- 
ing a fugitive slave to be thankful there is a Canada, 
when he knows he ought to be free without going 
there.'" 

Mr. Higginson officiated at the wedding and 
heartily approved the protest made by the newly 
married pair against the existing laws which did not 
allow a married woman to own even her own ward- 
robe. This protest was read and signed as a part of 
the ceremony. 

One of the many instances in which Mr. Higginson 
defended the equality of the sexes is preserved in an 
old newspaper account. He had been asked to serve 
on the committee of credentials at a temperance 



138 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

convention in another State. In explanation of his 
failure to do this, a speaker at the convention, 
who called Mr. Higginson the heart and head of 
the temperance cause in Massachusetts, said, "He 
came here at the call, but declined to serve on a com- 
mittee that could not recognize his sister as well as 
himself." 

With all this remarkable activity, the indefati- 
gable pastor did not neglect outdoor exercise and 
recreation. His love of boating found a happy outlet 
at Worcester where he was instrumental in organ- 
izing a boat club for young men and also one for 
girls, the latter being practically an unheard-of 
thing in those days. These novices he patiently and 
enthusiastically coached, to their own great delight. 
Once with a few young friends he camped for the 
night on a tiny island in Lake Quinsigamond to see 
the pond-lilies open at sunrise. There they sailed 
among "acres" of white lilies and hung wreaths of 
them on bow and mast. The boat he had owned at 
Newburyport went with him to Worcester, and he 
wrote to his mother: "This afternoon, under those 
wonderful clouds, I have been floating on Lake 
Quinsigamond, in the painted and rejuvenated 
Annie [Laurie]." 

Another diversion was found in long walks, in 
which Mr. Higginson was sometimes accompanied 



THE FREE CHURCH 139 

by H. G. O. Blake, Thoreau's friend and biographer, 
and occasionally by Thoreau himself. On some of 
these expeditions he collected birds' eggs: "If you 
only take one or two," he wrote, "the birds are not 
troubled. There is no form of re-creation so won- 
derful to me as this of eggs. That all the flashing 
splendor of the oriole, all the magnificent melody of 
the red thrush, should be coiled within these tiny 
and fragile walls." 

He officiated as president of an athletic club, ex- 
ercising regularly in the gymnasium, himself; and 
was also president of skating and cricket clubs. One 
of his outdoor days is thus described in a letter : — 

"Day before yesterday I went over to play a 
cricket match at Clinton, a thing I have been 
dreaming about ever since I was a child and found it 
as pleasant as I expected. We were all day in the 
open air, in the pleasantest green meadow near a 
river with high wood banks. We played from 9 till 3 
with short intermissions and then all took a swim in 
the river and went to dinner. Every one in Worcester 
supposed we should be beaten, but we beat them so 
tremendously, 3 to 1, that our return was a perfect 
ovation and it was quite exciting." 

To a young friend he wrote : — 

" I have felt so much strength and scope to come 
to me from even glimpses of an outdoor life that I 
understand your occasional longings to be a gipsy. 



140 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

I think it almost impossible to waste time spent out- 
doors. . . . 

* The hours the idle school boy squandered 
The man would die ere he 'd forget.' " 

Mr. Higginson's interest in botany here found 
scope; he continued the microscopic work begun in 
student days; and was the prime mover in forming 
the Worcester Natural History Society. He suc- 
ceeded in securing only one woman member, and 
this lady asserts that the meetings were most enter- 
taining. The reluctance of other women to become 
members is explained by the fact that in those days 
most women shrank from the least publicity. Mr. 
Higginson was also instrumental in organizing and 
managing the free public library, being one of its 
early trustees. In all these enterprises he enlisted a 
band of enthusiastic Worcester youth. His unusual 
gift for interesting young men is described by a 
former Harvard instructor who testifies that he saw 
"scores of instances of the perfectly extraordinary 
way in which his character inspired a desire in the 
hearts of young men to be like him." 

Mr. Higginson early concerned himself with prison 
reform and the problem of the future of discharged 
convicts. In spite of his multiplicity of cares, it 
was with a struggle that he decided on account of 
fatigue to forego the duties of an overseer of the 



THE FREE CHURCH 141 

poor. Although most responsive to appeals for 
help, the weary pastor sometimes rebelled a little, 
as in the following complaint: "Mrs. Dall writes to 
me about Woman's Rights petitions. Always there 
is the same difficulty; if I touch a thing with my 
little finger, I am always compelled, by the failure 
of co-laborers, to grasp it with my whole hand. . . . 
I have spent a large part of my life in trying to set 
men upon their legs who were constitutionally dis- 
qualified for standing there.' ' 

Many years later, in 1882, Mr. Higginson received 
a most unexpected tribute to his public work in 
Worcester. This was a bequest of five hundred 
dollars from a former resident of that town. The 
donor in his will left this sum to "Thos. Wentworth 
Higginson as a mark of my abiding appreciation of 
his noble labors in the city of Worcester." 



VIII 

ANTHONY BURNS AND THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 

In the mean time the fugitive slave question was 
seething, and Mr. Higginson wrote to a friend, George 
William Curtis, whom he considered lukewarm, 
" Remember that to us, Anti-Slavery is a matter of 
deadly earnest, which costs us our reputations to- 
day, and may cost us our lives to-morrow." 

In May, 1854, three years after the return of 
Sims to slavery, the Anthony Burns affair occurred. 
Colonel Higginson was often called upon in his later 
years to tell the details of this exciting episode. 
After the escape of Burns, a fugitive slave from 
Virginia, he had been, according to an old record, 
in the employ of a clothing dealer on Brattle Street, 
Boston. He wrote a letter to his brother in Virginia 
by the way of Canada, but as all letters to slaves 
were opened by their masters, his retreat was dis- 
covered. He was then arrested and imprisoned in 
an upper room of the court-house. A letter from 
Wendell Phillips notified Mr. Higginson of " another 
kidnapping case," saying, "you'll come of course," 
and signed, "in no hope." A placard was issued 



ANTHONY BURNS 143 

headed, "A Man Kidnapped," calling a meeting in 
Faneuil Hall and asking, "Shall he be plunged into 
the hell of Virginia slavery by a Massachusetts judge 
of probate?" Of this great meeting Mr. Higginson 
was one of the vice-presidents, and one of the few 
daring men who made the attack on the court-house 
with the hope of rescuing Burns. 

The scheme for the rescue was known to only a 
few of those present at the meeting. It was decided 
that in the midst of the proceedings an alarm should 
be raised by announcing that a mob of Negroes was 
attacking the court-house, followed by a sudden 
dismissal of the audience. Meantime Mr. Higginson 
went with a few others to Court Square to await 
their allies. He had bought axes with which to 
break in the doors, and the hardware dealer had 
made out the bill to "Mr. Higgins," perhaps never 
knowing who his customer was. Unfortunately for 
the success of the plan only a crowd of curious spec- 
tators reached the court-house, the handful of men 
who were interested in the rescue arriving too late. 
A stout beam was procured and with this implement 
Mr. Higginson and one or two others proceeded to 
force an entrance to the court-house. When the door 
gave way, Mr. Higginson and a Negro sprang inside 
and were instantly attacked by several policemen. 
In this affray, the former received a cut on his chin 



144 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

which left a permanent scar. While the policemen 
were hammering Mr. Higginson's head, a deputy 
marshal was killed. How and by whom was long a 
subject of controversy, for this was the first time 
a life had been sacrificed in an attempt to resist the 
Fugitive Slave Law. 

Of the Faneuil Hall meeting, Mr. Higginson wrote 
to a Newburyport friend: "That meeting at Faneuil 
Hall was tremendous. I never saw such enthusiasm, 
and (though warned that it would be so) I could not 
possibly believe that it would exhale so idly as it did 
in Court Square. Still, twenty more men, in the right 
place, would have rescued the slave, that all ac- 
knowledge." 

From Mr. W. F. Channing's house in Boston, 
where he had taken refuge, Mr. Higginson wrote to 
his wife: "There has been an attempt at rescue and 
failed. I am not hurt except a scratch on the face 
which will prevent me doing anything more about 
it, lest I be recognized." From the following letter, 
written two days later, May 28, to Rev. Samuel 
May, Jr., it appears that there was still hope of 
rescuing the slave : — 

"The excitement in this city [Worcester] is tre- 
mendous; entirely beyond any imagination. . . . The 
wildest things are proposed, and by persons whom 
I have considered very 'hunkerish.' For instance, 



ANTHONY BURNS 145 

they talk of arming 500 men to go to Boston. But 
it would be perfectly practicable to arm and organize 
100 if desirable. Shall we do it, and with what 
immediate object? 

"As it is, many will go to Boston to-morrow. 
There is an intense indignation at the failure of the 
Friday enterprise (though / call it a great success, 
and so do they, so far as it goes) and I think 
Worcester men, if they are at hand, may be relied on. 
If they send the poor man through Providence, we 
shall rescue him to a certainty. Any number could 
be sent from this place by an extra train. 

"But I have no idea that he will ever be taken 
from Boston, for I think that either the Kidnappers 
will be killed first ; or else that Boston men will buy 
him to save the peace of the city. This, though not 
so good as a rescue, would come pretty near it, after 
the event of Friday night. . . . Finally, should not 
something be done by the Committee in the way of 
assistance to the family of the man shot, supposing 
it to be so arranged as to show no contrition on our 
part, for a thing in which we had no responsibility, 
but simply to show that we have no war with 
women and children. 

" I hear rumors of my arrest, but hardly expect it. 
If true, I hope no U.S. Officer will be sent up, for I 
cannot answer for his life in the streets of Worcester. 
. . . Send for me if you want me again. I am 
thankful for what has been done — it is the great- 
est step in Anti-Slavery which Massachusetts has 
ever taken. And I am ready to do my share over 
again." 



146 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

B urns' s master agreed to sell him for a certain 
sum, but after the money was raised, he changed his 
mind. The day on which Burns was returned to 
slavery, when he was marched through the streets 
of Boston guarded by United States troops, was 
known for many years after as "Bad Friday." The 
following Sunday Mr. Higginson preached a sermon 
called "Massachusetts in Mourning," in which he 
said, "The strokes on the door of that court-house 
that night . . . went echoing from town to town . . . 
and each reverberating throb was a blow upon the 
door of every slave prison of this guilty republic." 

After the excitement had somewhat subsided, Mr. 
Higginson wrote: — 

44 I do not think they can prove much against the 
men arrested — I have been repeatedly told that I 
was to be one of that number myself, and have 
patiently waited for the officers; but they have not 
yet appeared (though there was a hit at me in the 
Post this morning) and I cannot stay at home for 
them much longer." 

To his Aunt Nancy he wrote: — 

44 You will be especially glad to hear that it is 
considered quite doubtful whether our cases are ever 
tried — even in the United States Court. 

14 Don't be frightened if you see in the paper that 
/ have fled to parts unknown with other people's 
money in my pocket — for the Rev. Mr. Higgins of 



ANTHONY BURNS 147 

this city . . . has done so, and I don't doubt that 
distant newspapers will contrive to get the name 
wrong." 

Later he reported : — 

"I was arrested on Saturday June 10, 1854, and 
1 bound over ' to appear before the Municipal Court 
in Boston in April — on charge of ' riot ' committed 
on that Friday evening. But I had been expecting 
it for a week — and even if I should be convicted 
of anything and imprisoned a month or two (which 
is improbable) it would do so much good to the 
community, that I could bear it very patiently." 

It was claimed that the early hour of this arrest 
at 6.30 a.m., a few minutes before the Boston train 
started, was chosen lest the ''Freedom Club" of 
Worcester should interfere and prevent the arrest. 
When Mr. Higginson was arraigned before the 
Boston Police Court, he was accused of assembling 
with five hundred others to disturb the peace of the 
Commonwealth and "did unlawfully and riotously 
attack the Court-House . . . did throw stones, 
bricks . . . did break the glass in the windows and 
did force in and break open one of the doors . . . 
[did] fire and discharge sundry firearms . . . did 
utter loud cries and huzzas ... to the great terror 
and disturbance of divers citizens." 

A Boston newspaper, reporting this incident, said 
of the accused clergyman: — 



148 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"He is a man of talent, a great enthusiast, and 
though he stands within the pale of Unitarianism, 
he is regarded as a suspicious character, theoretically 
speaking. His appearance in Court excited no little 
sensation." 

Some months later, in December, he wrote to his 
mother : — 

"I am to be tried before the U.S. Court with 
Theodore Parker and others. ... I rather think 
therefore that the other process (before the State 
court) will be withdrawn. I don't think they will 
expect anything, on either charge — but of the two 
I prefer to be tried on charge of violating the 
Fugitive Slave Law than for 'riotous and routous 
behavior/" 

As the time drew near, his mother dreaded the 
" horrid trial," and fearing that her son would be 
shut up for a year, came herself to the rescue. " My 
impulsive young mother," he wrote, "came down 
for an unexpected night last week." This devoted 
visitor found her son somewhat the worse for his 
encounter, but she rejoiced that instead of joining 
in the "inflammatory" speeches at Faneuil Hall, he 
was engaged in battering down the door of the 
court-house. "The indictment," to quote "Cheerful 
Yesterdays," "was ultimately quashed as imperfect, 
and we all got out of the affair, as it were, by the side 
door." Rev. Cyrus A. Bartol, in an article on " Boston 



ANTHONY BURNS 149 

Tea Parties," written in 1874, said in reference to 
this event, "To-day, we honor the man that last let 
go his hold — I believe it was Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson — of the battering-ram against the court- 
house door." 

Somewhat later, a Boston policeman named 
Butman, who had been instrumental in Burns's 
arrest, went to Worcester to find evidence against 
those concerned in the riot. The Worcester people 
were so enraged by this uncalled-for visit that 
Butman's life was in danger, and the pastor of the 
Free Church risked his own by helping him escape. 
The event was thus described in a letter to a friend : 

"I was not seriously damaged in the Butman 
trouble. ... It was a time of peril however, though 
it ended in nothing worse than frightening a bully 
into a coward. I wish the poor creature's face could 
have been daguerreotyped as he crouched into the 
bottom of the carriage when the stones came crash- 
ing in ; I never saw such an image of abject fear. Our 
City Marshal had to drive him the whole way to 
Boston, too frightened to get into the cars; when 
they changed horses half way, he hid himself in the 
woods and could hardly be found again; he would 
not enter Boston till after dark, nor go to his house 
even then, but spent the night at a hotel. They have 
arrested a few persons for riot, chiefly those who 
were most instrumental in saving him ! — so that 
not much will come of it. 



150 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

". . . There comes over me at times a strange 
wonder whether greater and better persons in times 
past have' taken their life as quietly while it was 
contemporary, and forgotten all the hubbubs in the 
little events of every day. . . . No affairs in which 
I was ever engaged have excited me so much as it 
would have excited me to hear the thing well told in 
story or history. I can understand the client who 
cried when his lawyer told the tale of his wrongs — 
'he never knew how much he had suffered before/ " 

A newspaper of the time says: — 

"He [Mr. Butman] awards praise to those who 
defended him after the storm had been roused, 
especially Mr. Higginson. . . . Some of the crowd 
did not distinguish in their attacks between Mr. 
Butman and Mr. Higginson. The latter gentleman 
received a considerable share of the missiles, and 
one large stone was thrown into the carriage, nar- 
rowly missing his head." 

Miss Higginson wrote an anxious letter of inquiry 
to her brother, expressing his mother's disapproval 
of the whole affair, but concluding, "It is evident 
you are going to be a real knight-errant, always on 
hand." 

Several years later, Mr. Higginson wrote]to a friend, 
"Did you ever see an extravaganza of a novel, 
1 Harrington/ of which I was said to be the highly 
melodramatic hero — though I never knew the 
author — and which certainly worked up some scenes 



THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 151 

of my life, as the Butman riot in Worcester, with 
some power ?" 

It was a time when fugitive slaves frequently 
needed assistance, and the Underground Railroad 
was in full operation. Mr. Higginson was always 
eager to lend a hand to these escaping wretches. In 
the Boston " Liberator' ' and Worcester newspapers 
of the period, communications over his signature 
frequently appeared, asking for financial aid, some- 
times for a distressed family which was trying to 
buy its own freedom. "Now this sum must be 
raised speedily," he declared. "Let every man 
•choose once for all, between his love for freedom, and 
for a full pocket; for, as far as I have observed, in 
this land of liberty it is difficult to combine both." 

In other cases he attempted to find work or hid- 
ing-places for the refugees. In one instance a home 
was sought for two boys who had been emancipated 
by their Kentucky master on condition that they 
should be cared for in a free State. 

This note of introduction, written by Mr. Hig- 
ginson to "Mr. F. B. Sanborn or Mr. R. W. Emer- 
son," is given as a sample of the correspondence be- 
tween the active abolitionists of that day: — 

"Worcester, Sept. 14, i860. 
"The bearer, Capt. Stewart — sometimes known 
as Preacher Stewart — of Kansas, is leaving here 



152 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

to-day and I have advised him to pass through Con- 
cord and call on you. He is the head of the Under- 
ground Railway Enterprise in Kansas and has just 
made a highly successful trip. Mr. Stearns and others 
are raising funds to assist him in his operations. 

"He brought on this trip a young slave girl of 15, 
nearly white, for whom some provision must be 
made." 

There are many letters to Mr. Higginson from 
Rev. Samuel May, Jr., in reference to fugitives 
needing aid. One of these describes a young woman 
with babies whose master had threatened to move 
"earth and heir' to get her back. Mr. May thought 
the fugitives would be searched for in Boston, and 
that Worcester would afford her "as much safety 
as this accursed Union can give to a class which has 
no rights that white men are bound to respect." Of 
this woman, Mr. Higginson wrote: — 

"We are expecting here an interesting person, 
young and beautiful, white and a slave. She escaped 
4 months ago from North Carolina, disguised in 
deep mourning, bringing her child 3 years old, also 
white. She has also a baby born since her arrival; 
they are her master's children, poor creature; and 
she is coming here for safety. She has always been 
petted and waited on, and can do nothing except 
sew; but we shall probably get her into some family 
where she can do housework: and perhaps the elder 
child will be adopted, if she is willing." 



THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 153 

It happened during these anxious days that Sum- 
ner bought a Negro family and gave them their 
freedom. One of the children was white, and Mr. 
Higginson conceived the plan of adopting her and 
thus filling the vacancy in his own family. He wrote: 

"I have made a new acquaintance, most fasci- 
nating to me — the dear little white slave girl whom 
Mr. Sumner purchased — ' Ida May ' they call her 
— but her real name is Mary Mildred something. 
Fancy a slender little girl of seven . . . with reddish 
hair, brown eyes, delicate features and skin so delicate 
as to be a good deal freckled. She came up to be shown 
at a public meeting here, and it was love at first sight 
between us, she was like an own child to me, and 
when in Boston this morning I restored her to her tall 
mulatto father and her handsome little dark brother 
and sister, it gave me a strange bewildered feeling. 
They were owned in Alexandria; the mother and 
grandmother are described as almost white. I am 
going to see them. There is a photograph of the 
little girl, but not nearly so good as a daguerreotype 
which was taken here, of her sitting in my lap — her 
face is lovely in the picture, but mine (my wife 
declares) is spoiled by happiness' 1 

Later he added : — 

"When I was in Boston I went to see my darling 
little Mildred Williams Ida May: they, you know, 
are free. She is as gentle and refined as ever, with 
her delicate skin and golden hair. She may be 
adopted by a member of Congress.' ' 



154 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

In reference to this curious episode, Mr. Higgin- 
son's old Newburyport friend, Caroline Andrews 
(Leighton) writes : — 

" Mr. Higginson was much moved at the situation 
of this lovely child. He wished me to take her home 
with me and keep her for a while in my vacation, at 
Newburyport. While I was there he wrote me the 
most explicit directions in regard to her care and 
enjoyment. I thought he hoped at one time to 
adopt her, as after I had returned to my school, and 
given her back to her parents, he wrote sorrowfully 
to me, ' My dream of Mildred is ended. I was not 
worthy of it.' " 

A saving sense of humor was needed in those grim 
days; and in the midst of tragedies Mr. Higginson 
wrote to his mother : — 

"One funny thing we have heard — a small child, 
endeavoring to describe a black man in the street, 
at last succeeded in stammering out, 'It's a Tom- 
Cabin ! ' and was quite satisfied that he had said the 
right thing." 



IX 

THE ATLANTIC ESSAYS 

In the midst of these public interests, Mr. Higginson 
did some of the best literary work of his life. In the 
winter of 1852, he dined with A. Bronson Alcott at 
James T. Fields*, and Mr. Alcott amused himself 
by guessing, with astonishing success, Mr. Higgin- 
son's literary methods. Some of the features he had 
divined were the young author's habit of bridge- 
building, of composing much in the open air, 
and in separate sentences. This analysis the latter 
declared admirable, and reflected: ''I might have 
said to him — in summer I bring home from the 
woods in my pockets flowers, lichens, chrysalids, 
nests, brown lizards, baby turtles . . . spiders' eggs 
. . . and scraps of written paper.' ' 

In November, 1853, Mr. F. H. Underwood wrote 
to Mr. Higginson, asking for aid from his pen for 
a new " literary and anti-slavery magazine" [the 
"Atlantic Monthly"], adding, "The articles will 
all be anonymous." In answer, he wrote: "I gladly 
contribute my name to the list of writers. . . . 
I am very much absorbed by necessary writing, 



156 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

speaking, and studies, and it is hard to do collateral 
work." 

The essays which Mr. Higginson contributed to 
the early numbers of the " Atlantic" attracted a 
great deal of attention. "A Charge with Prince 
Rupert" was considered one of the most brilliant of 
these early papers; while the first one, "Saints and 
their Bodies," so impressed Dr. D. A. Sargent, after- 
ward director of the Harvard Gymnasium, that he 
was led to adopt physical training as a profession. 

In reference to one of the essays, "Woman and 
the Alphabet," 1 Rev. O. B. Frothingham wrote to 
ask the author if it was abstinence from soups — and 
salt — and pastry that enabled him to write such 
papers. "Tell me how much liquid," he asked, "I 
must exchange for such a flow of thoughts — how 
much pepper must be forsaken to leave such spice of 
wit? How much pie crust must be sacrificed for such 
a crispness of style?" This striking essay was at 
first considered by James Russell Lowell, then edi- 
tor of the " Atlantic Monthly," as too radical for that 
magazine, but he afterwards decided to insert it. 

In the diary of 1890, Mr. Higginson wrote, " Much 
gratified at letter from Miss Eastman telling me 
from Dr. that my ' Ought Women ' was really 

1 This article was also published as a tract under the title 
" Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet ? " 



THE ATLANTIC ESSAYS 157 

the seed of Smith College." A further tribute to 
the value of this essay came to the author in a letter 
from a thoughtful friend, who said, " I think it was 
one of the influences that opened Michigan Univer- 
sity to women, and has now invited a woman pro- 
fessor on the same terms as men." 

The anonymousness of the "Atlantic" essays 
caused some amusing mistakes, as when Mrs. C. H. 
Dall was many times congratulated on having writ- 
ten " Mademoiselle and her Campaigns." Finally 
she discovered the author, and wrote to him that 
no one except Macaulay could have written a better 
magazine article, "and his would have been half 
lies." 

Mr. Higginson himself wrote to Harriet Prescott : 

"... I had more [letters] about 'April Days' 
than about anything I have written — sick women, 
young farmers, etc. One odd anonymous person, 
signing Su Su, sent me a root of double bloodroot 
postmarked "Snow's Store, Vt." It seemed pretty 
that bloodroot should come out of Snow's Store — 
though I suppose the donor never thought of it. 

" I have a piece almost ready called 'My Outdoor 
Study,' based on a description of the lake where we 
go for boating. . . . Theseessays on Nature delight 
me so infinitely that all other themes seem tiresome 
beside them; I am sure that I have never come so 
near to Nature as during the last year, and therefore 
never so truly and deeply lived; and sometimes I 



158 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

feel so Exalted in this nearness that it seems as if I 
never could sorrow any more. 

". . . I wrote from pure enjoyment, spending 
days and weeks on single sentences.' ' 

In the correspondence between Mr. Higginson 
and Mr. Underwood occurred this protest from the 
former: — 

"I wish to be understood as giving a suppressed 
but audible growl at the chopping knife which made 
minced meat of my sentences. . . . It is something 
new. ... I don't think I tend to such very long 
sentences; and it isn't pleasant to think that they 
belong to such a low order of organization that they 
can be chopped in the middle and each half wriggle 
away independently." 

At thirty-six, in summing up his life, the author 
of these essays writes : — 

"I do not expect any visible sphere or position 
except in literature — perhaps not there because I 
do not find that my facility grows so fast as my 
fastidiousness. . . . Certainly nothing short of 
severe starvation shall make me write and print 
what does not in some degree satisfy my own con- 
ception of literary execution." 

And the joy he found in literature is thus ex- 
pressed : — 

" Nothing but Haydon's jubilees over his great 
'canvas up' can describe my delight when I get a 



THE ATLANTIC ESSAYS 159 

new budget of notes and materials into a fresh 
portfolio, and begin upon a new picture." 

In regard to the publication of the book of sea 
poems, profanely called the "Marine Sam-Book" 
in distinction from the hymn-book compiled by 
Messrs. Longfellow and Johnson, and popularly 
known as the "Sam-Book," Mr. Higginson wrote 
to a friend : — 

"The best result of S. L.'s [Samuel Longfellow] 
visit [to Europe] was to transform Thalatta from a 
past vision to a future reality. . . . We planned it 
six years ago and now Europe has revived it all in 
Sam and he has proposed it once more to James T. 
Fields (Ticknor & Co.) and that bold youth (also 
fresh from Europe, these two having visited the 
Brownings together) consented. So the book is to 
begin to be printed in February and between now 
and then what copying and debating and select- 
ing!" 

In 1859, the famous "Atlantic" dinner was given 
to Mrs. Stowe, which Colonel Higginson has 
described in "Cheerful Yesterdays." To his mother 
he thus reported a conversation on this occasion with 
Dr. Holmes: — 

"He [Holmes] was very pleasant and cordial to 
me, but turned upon me when I refused a cigar. 
'What,' said he, 'you don't smoke?' 'No,' said I. 
'Then,' said he, 'you unquestionably chew the 



160 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

betel-nut.' I told him I was fond of nuts and also of 
beetles, but preferred my botany and entomology 
separate. 'Ah,' said he, 'but everybody must have 
some narcotic, if you don't chew the betel-nut, you 
take opium pills or laudanum in some form.' I 
assured him I took no pills but homoeopathic and 
those rarely." 

The incessant activity of these years wore even 
on Mr. Higginson's wonderful physique and he 
wrote : — 

"I suppose that even I myself can hardly realize 
how much overworked I have been this winter — so 
much writing and speaking and visiting have I had 
to do (studying has been almost suspended) — to 
say nothing of travelling for various objects and the 
constant care of my wife who has scarcely ever 
needed more attention. . . . 

"We suspended housekeeping awhile, for my 
wife's health, and have been boarding since New 
Year's at the queerest old rambling Hotel, one of the 
few old things in Worcester. . . . 

"We are so very nicely placed here at the Lincoln 
House, M. is quite delighted. We have a pleasant 
parlor on Elm St. with a little bedroom and a large 
closet ; it fronts South and the house is brick, so it is 
perfectly warm and M. has stood a snowstorm with- 
out a shudder. . . . There is a girl with a violent 
piano below, a man with a violent nose beside us, 
and two youths over our heads who apparently sleep 
in boots." 



THE ATLANTIC ESSAYS 161 

Winter lecturing with all its drawbacks afforded a 
change of scene. One of his journeys took Mr. Hig- 
ginson to Maine, and he wrote from Orono: — 

"Last night I drove from Bangor with a buffalo 
coat on, over wonderful sleighing and felt quite like 
a backwoodsman. Bangor streets are crowded with 
uncouth sledges and teams, and at the doors of the 
shops hang abundant moccasins and long red leggins 
and even snowshoes. To-day I am to have a lesson 
in these from Mr. L. and ride to where I can see 
Indians and Katahdin. ,, 

This glimpse of "the great lonely Katahdin," as 
he describes that mountain, led the next year to a 
nearer acquaintance; for in 1855 the Worcester 
parson, accompanied by a few of his friends, made 
the ascent of Mount Katahdin. This letter to Mrs. 
Higginson was written from Bangor : — 

" I am writing behind the bar; many men here — 
they come up and read our names in the book and 
wonder what brings so many here from Worcester. 
One says, 'Higginson. He's the great abolitionist 
from Worcester, he who had the fuss in the U.S. 
Court — is that Theo. Brown beneath? // ought to be 
Theodore Parker. 1 " 

And in the delight which this excursion gave him, he 
exclaimed: — "I am very happy and feel ready to 
mount up with wings as eagles." 

Mr. Higginson wrote an account of this expedition 



162 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

for "Putnam's Magazine," the article purporting 
to be written by a woman. The author amused him- 
self by sending a copy to each member of the party, 
that they might guess its origin. 

"We did have a charming time on the trip to 
Mount Katahdin," he wrote. "The 30 miles by 
water on our return, shooting the rapids, were the 
most exciting experiences I ever yet had." 

A later visit to Maine was of a different nature, 
for he spoke at Bangor on " ' Kansas and the Union/ 
the former being the bait and the latter the hook. 
I had a superb audience . . . and preached Dis- 
union to 1500 people for $50 — and no hisses." 

The Higginsons spent several vacations at Pigeon 
Cove, a wild, rocky sea-place on the North Shore. 
When they summered one season at the town of 
Princeton, they found quarters at the Post-Office. 
This seemed to Mr. Higginson a "funny" place to 
stay, as he fancied the mattresses would be made 
of "exhausted mail-bags." From Pigeon Cove, he 
wrote to a young author : — 

"I enjoy the freedom of my life very much, and 
after having my thoughts poured regularly into one 
channel every week for so long, it is perfectly de- 
lightful to let them wander in other directions. . . . 

"The bathing is a regeneration of existence every 
day. ... If you could put on a boy's jacket and 



THE ATLANTIC ESSAYS 163 

go to sea, before the mast, for a year, it would put a 
vitality into your inkstand that would last your life 
time. . . . Every month makes me think less, rela- 
tively, of books, and more of life. Indeed one gets 
but little out of books till we have taught them to 
know their places. 

". . . I spent this morning wading after them 
[water-lilies] in a pond with two young ladies 
aged 10." 

Involved again in the daily routine of parish work, 
Mr. Higginson felt the need of more leisure for 
thought and study and told his mother: — 

"I yesterday propounded an arrangement to the 
Free Church people, by which I am to have — don't 
laugh — nothing less than a colleague. I cannot 
always go on at the rate I have been lately working. 
. . . The plan is that Wasson should so come and 
do the greater part of the preaching, taking of 
course a good part of the salary; this will leave me 
time for preaching, lecturing and writing, and by this 
I can make up a sufficient income, for the present at 
least. ... In fact, my natural activity is so great, 
that I have to contrive means to keep myself out of 
work." 

An unexpected break in this too laborious life 
came in the autumn of 1855, when the Higginsons 
sailed for Fayal for Mrs. Higginson's health. They 
spent the winter there, and Mr. Wasson took charge 
of the Free Church during this absence. Fayal 



164 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

proved to be more wonderful to the travellers than 
any dream, every inch of surface and each individual 
person being entirely different from anything they 
had seen before. In Mr. Higginson's "Atlantic" 
paper, "Fayal and the Portuguese" (i860), these 
strange experiences were described. And it was in 
Fayal that Mr. Higginson wrote his essay called the 
"Sympathy of Religions." This paper was after- 
wards read by the author before the Free Religious 
Association in Boston, and later before the Parlia- 
ment of Religions at Chicago in 1893. It was re- 
printed in England and also translated into French. 
While in Fayal, he was delighted to receive "a 
charming letter from Agassiz, begging me to collect 
corals, starfishes, etc., of which I already have a 
store." And after his return, he reported: — 

" I spent part of yesterday with Prof. Agassiz and 
enjoyed it very much, and he was delighted with my 
collection from the Azores especially the sea-urchins, 
of which he found eight species, some of them new. 
Some of the things he is to return to me, labelled, for 
the [Worcester] Natural History Society." 

The home-coming from Fayal Mr. Higginson 
described in this letter to his mother : — 

"We arrived last night at 9 \ [June, 1856] after a 
three weeks' passage. . . . 

1 ' The world looks very odd, people talking English, 



THE ATLANTIC ESSAYS 165 

lighted shops last night, and horses. To-day every- 
body with bonnets and shoes!! People so well 
dressed, so intelligent, and so sick — so unlike the 
robust baseness of Fayal and Pico. And the foliage 
is so inexpressibly beautiful. Houses agonizingly 
warm, after the tireless rooms of Fayal, and the chilly 
ocean.' ' 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 

The returned pastor was at once launched into 
exciting scenes. The assault on Charles Sumner in 
the Senate Chamber had but just occurred, and the 
contest between the free and slave States for the 
possession of the Territory of Kansas was at its 
height. There was then a reign of terror along the 
Kansas border, the advocates of slavery victimizing 
the Free-State settlers. An enthusiastic meeting 
was held in Worcester to welcome Mr. Higginson 
home and promote emigration to Kansas, and an' 
earnest appeal was made for volunteers, rifles, and 
blankets in aid of the Free-State emigrants against 
whom the Missouri River was blockaded. "It is 
amazing/' wrote the impatient clergyman, "how 
sluggish people have been in acting for Kansas. 
Nobody seems to feel the need of promptness or of a 
better organization.' ' 

A committee, of which Mr. Higginson was a 
member, was appointed to arrange for the passage 
and equipment of emigrants to Kansas. In June, 
1856, he was sent to Chicago and St. Louis to give 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 167 

aid and advice to a party from Massachusetts who, 
to quote a newspaper account, "had fallen among 
thieves/ ' From Alton, Illinois, he wrote to his wife, 
" To-morrow I expect to meet our disarmed troops 
in St. Louis — poor things. I shall send them on 
through Iowa, where Stowell has gone before them." 
At St. Louis, Mr. Higginson chartered a steamboat 
to take the party up the Mississippi to Davenport, 
Iowa. This party, led by a certain Dr. Cutter, had 
been charged by a Missouri paper with cowardice. 
To this charge Mr. Higginson responded in the 
Boston " Journal": "I have seen frightened men, in 
Massachusetts and elsewhere, and I never saw men 
look less like them than did Dr. Cutter's party. I 
went out to St. Louis partly to see how they had 
stood fire, and partly to give them instructions for 
the future. My instructions were, if they met a party 
of Missourians not larger than five to one, to fight 
to the last rather than surrender." This party of 
forty men had surrendered to three thousand of the 
enemy by whom they were disarmed and turned 
back. 

"I almost hoped to hear," he wrote to the 
" Tribune," "that some of their lives had been sacri- 
ficed, for it seems as if nothing but that would arouse 
the Eastern States to act. This seems a terrible 
thing to say, but these are terrible times." Of the 



168 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

party led by S to well, a Worcester man who was 
conspicuous in the Anthony Burns affair, Mr. 
Higginson said in the same letter : — 

"Do you know that they came and absolutely 
begged of me to let them go up the Missouri River 
. . . pledging themselves to die, if need be, but to 
redeem the honor of Massachusetts. From the bot- 
tom of my heart I felt with them ; one word from me 
would have done it, but I did not feel authorized to 
speak that word, and therefore sent them on by the 
other route. Had they gone by the river I should 
have gone with them, for I never found anything 
harder than it would be to quit this river, believing, 
as I do, that there are plans practicable by which the 
passage might yet be opened to free emigrants." 

In these frequent articles for the newspapers, Mr. 
Higginson not only reported the progress of the 
different groups of emigrants, but called for funds. 
Soon after his return to Worcester, the city hall was 
crowded with eager listeners to hear the report of 
his trip and an account of the exciting events which 
were transpiring on the Missouri River. He wrote 
to his mother: — 

"Our parties are getting safely on beyond Iowa 
City — there is stage connection now to the Mis- 
souri River below Council Bluffs — thence about 
ioo miles on foot to Topeka. . . . 

"Beneath the stir of civil war we keep up a more 
perfectly placid domestic existence than ever before. 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 169 

. . . We make little walks and visits in the cool of 
the evening, water our seeds, dig round the fruit 
trees, train our vines and plan for improving rose- 
bushes. The sunsets never were so lovely here; and 
copious dishes of currants (succeeding cherries) par- 
tially console us for the disasters of the times. . . . 

"I am particularly popular in private just now, 
for what I am doing about Kansas, and it is rather 
pathetic to have them thank me for doing what they 
ought to have taken hold of, themselves, but have 
not. . . . 

"I am probably to be Agent for Kansas parties 
from New England officially, which I have hitherto 
been unofficially — this will save me trouble by 
putting funds in my hands. . . . 

"A party left Boston for Kansas on Tuesday — 
20 were from Maine and the strongest looking men 
I ever saw — mostly in red shirts." 

In September Mr. Higginson was made an agent 
of the Kansas National Committee, and in this 
capacity went to Kansas to superintend the move- 
ments of these very Maine lumbermen. In his let- 
ters to the New York " Tribune' ' describing this 
trip, and later printed in a little pamphlet called 
"A Ride Through Kansas," he says: — 

" Coming from a land where millionaires think 
themselves generous in giving fifty dollars to Kansas, 
I converse daily with men who have sacrificed all 
their property in its service, and are ready at any 
hour to add their lives." 



170 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

From Nebraska City, he wrote (September, 
1856):- 

"I have myself bought up for the emigrants all 
the cowhide boots to be found in town (except extra 
sizes) and nearly all the flannel shirts and blan- 
kets. . . . 

"At present no person, without actually travel- 
ling across Iowa, can appreciate the injury done by 
the closing of the Missouri River. Emigrants must 
toil, week after week, beneath a burning sun, over 
the parched and endless 'rolling prairie,' sometimes 
seeing no house for a day or two together, camping 
often without wood, and sometimes without water, 
and obliged to carry with them every eatable they 
use. It is no wonder that they often fall sick on the 
way ; and when I consider how infinitely weary were 
even my four days and nights of staging (after as 
many more of railroad travel), I can only wonder 
at the patience and fortitude which the present 
emigrants have shown. 

"As soon as one approaches the Missouri River, 
even in Iowa and Nebraska, he begins to feel as if 
he were in France or Austria. Men are very cau- 
tious in defining their position, and wait to hear 
what others will say. Then, perhaps, their tongues 
are slightly loosed, if they think there are no spies 
about them. But it is no slight risk when a man may 
have to pay with his life, further down the river, for 
a free word, spoken at Council Bluffs or Sidney, both 
Pro-Slavery towns. 

"The first night I spent in this place, it seemed as 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 171 

if a symbolical pageant had been got up to remind 
me where I was. I sat writing by an open window in 
the beautiful moonlight. A party of boys in the 
street were shouting and screeching, playing ' Border 
Ruffian/ and 'storming a fort/ In a building be- 
yond, two very inexperienced performers played 
martial tunes with a drum and fife. Within, the 
small tavern rocked with the music and dancing of 
a border ball. Thus I sat between tragedy and 
comedy." 

To his mother the faithful son wrote from the 
same town : — 

" This is a queer little cluster of houses, and a very 
crowded little tavern — nothing very abundant but 
watermelons which every body eats all day . . . . We 
hear often from Kansas, they are not in distress 
actually, nor besieged, and the invaders seem just 
now rather discouraged. We shall have a strong 
mounted escort to lead us in, a week hence, and 
probably not danger enough to make it exciting. 
There is also perfectly safe exit this way, so my 
spirit of adventure is a little checked. But along the 
lower river towns the Missourians have it all their 
own way and we are constantly seeing men who have 
been plundered of all they possess." 

The traveller reported to his wife : — 

"I have been for a week in a forlorn little town, 
arranging a train of emigrants to go into Kansas, 
armed and equipped as the law forbids. 

"... I am very busy, but lead a crowded, dusty, 



172 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

dirty life — and though death for freedom is all very 
fine, when it comes to dirt for freedom, the sacrifice 
becomes unexpectedly hard." 

Here he encountered General "Jim" Lane, com- 
manding the " Free-State Forces of Kansas," but 
then retreating by order of Governor Geary. From 
the supplies sent from the East, Mr. Higginson 
helped to re-clothe the General's band, and was 
amused at receiving from the guerrilla leader a posi- 
tion on his staff with the title of Brigadier-General, 
an honor liberally conferred by Lane on sympa- 
thizers with the Free-State cause. 

To his mother he wrote : — 

"A new and important town in Kansas is threat- 
ened with the name of Quindaro, which means a 
Bundle of Sticks, after the Indian wife of the pro- 
jector. This I deprecate and suggest Quincy — after 
old Josiah, as a substitute. Also I have urged your 
name of Sumner. The trouble of these family names 
is that by and by there must be Christian names 
to distinguish them, there will be so many. Fancy 
a town of South-Wendell Phillips or Wm. Lloyd- 
Garrison-4-corners, or Rev. Gen. Thos. Wentworth 
Higginson Centre!" 

On September 24, Mr. Higginson wrote home from 
Topeka : — 

' ' I got here yesterday afternoon after six days' 
ride and walk (chiefly the former) across the prairies 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 173 

of Kansas. A few of the fort teams came with me, — 
the rest of the train will be in to-day and to-morrow. 
. . . We camped out five nights which I enjoyed on 
the whole, though only in the last night did we 
have wood enough for the Maine style of tent, open 
toward the fire. Imagine me also patrolling as one 
of the guard for an hour every night, in high boots 
amid the dewy grass, rifle in hand and revolver in 
belt. But nobody ever came and we never had any 
danger. Only once, in the day time, the whole com- 
pany charged upon a band of extremely nude 
Indians, taking them for Missourians. . . . 

"We had in our camps some twenty tents and 
thirty wagons; including parties from Maine, Mass., 
Vt., Illinois, etc., and six large families from Indiana. 
On the other hand, we met quite as many going out 
of Kansas, some to avoid arrest, others from pov- 
erty. ... At this moment, moreover, there are 
nineteen wagons on the two sides of the river here, 
moving away in despair. 

" . . . The people are braver than anything I ever 
dreamed of, and when they once adopt the policy 
of resistance to the United States will do it. But 
they will wait till after election first. 

"This winter there will be much suffering, but 
not from the absence of food, only the money to buy 
it. All employment has been suspended and still 
is so. ,, 

The story is continued from "A Ride Through 
Kansas": — 

"It was like entering Hungary just after the 



174 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

treachery of Gorgey. Each had his story to tell of 
arrests and tyrannies; how a Pro-Slavery witness 
had only to point at a man as identified with any 
measure of public defence, and he was seized at once. 
Several whom we met had been arrested in person, 
herded with a hundred others, like cattle, on the 
bare prairie, been scantily fed once a day, and 
escaped by rolling half a mile through the grass 
while the sentinels' backs were turned. The bravest 
young men of Lawrence were put under arrest, 
charged with treason, murder, arson, robbery, and 
what not; while not a Pro-Slavery man was seized. 
This was the penalty they had to pay for defending 
themselves vigorously at last, and clearing their 
own soil from the invading Missourians. ' The worst 
enemy Kansas had ever had/ they pronounced 
Governor Geary to be; and they were going into 
Iowa to wait for better times. ' Will you give up 
Kansas?' I asked. 'Never!' was the reply from 
bronzed and bearded lips, stern and terrible as the 
weapons that hung to the saddle-bow. 'We are 
scattered, starved, hunted, half -naked, but we are 
not conquered yet. 1 

"Some of these were young men, whom I had seen 
go from prosperous homes, well clothed and cared 
for. I had since heard of them performing acts of 
heroic courage in this summer's battles. Lane had 
praised them to me, and declared that there never 
was such courage in the world as that of the Free- 
State men of Kansas. ' I saw one of them,' said he, 
'ride up alone within thirty yards of a body of a 
hundred and fifty men, during an engagement, take 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 175 

deliberate aim, and bring one down.' I now saw 
that very man — that boy rather, a Worcester boy 
— retreating from his adopted country, hungry, 
ragged, and almost barefooted, walking wearily on, 
with others hunted like himself, while some, who 
had been less scrupulous, rode by on horses which 
they had plundered from the Missourians, who had 
first plundered them." 

Mrs. Higginson wrote to Brattleboro that the 
news from Kansas grew worse every day, and after 
describing various household economies she said, 
" Money is very scarce, and everything goes to 
Kansas, I believe." Then she told of a " Kansas 
Sewing Circle which is to meet every p.m. . . . Mrs. 
Le B. has begun the first pair of pants! . . . Martha 
Le B. says she shall sew all day for Kansas and the 
evenings for Anti-Slavery fair!" 

Meantime, the traveller wrote from Lawrence. 
September 28, to his friend, Dr. Seth Rogers (after- 
ward surgeon of his regiment) : — 

"Yesterday morning I waked at Topeka and 
found the house surrounded by dragoons. To my 
amazement, on going out, the Captain addressed 
me by name. . . . He was very cordial, but their 
office was to arrest the leaders of the party just 
arrived if they proved to be a military company. 
They were happily already satisfied that we were 
not, and this was merely a matter of form ; and they 
also wanted Redpath, the reported leader of the 



176 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

party, and not me. Finally Col. Preston, the young 
Virginia Marshal, decided to arrest no one, and he, 
Redpath, Gov. Robinson, and I rode down in one 
carriage to Gov. Geary at Lecompton, and after 
some talk with the pompous, foolish, conceited, 
obstinate Governor were honorably discharged. If 
they had had wit to discover the Sharp's rifles and 
cannon we brought in with us, we should all have 
been arrested. . . . 

" Lawrence is a beautiful place and this Kansas 
People is glorious — so brave and patient and per- 
fectly buoyant, no one depressed, even after 3 weeks 
of green corn and squash. There has been and is 
suffering here, and the greatest need is now of money 
in Kansas, to keep people from moving out. Half of 
those who come in as emigrants go out again, but 
these old settlers must be kept here. 

" Money can now buy flour here cheaper than it 
can be sent in — say at $5 per 100 lbs. Clothing 
should be forwarded instantly before the river is 
closed again, but money is the great need. 

"I shall stay till over election because there may 
be trouble then. That is Monday Oct. 6. Next day 
I shall leave and try to get home (by the river) on 
the following Sunday. At any rate by the Conven- 
tion of Oct. 14, which I see advertised to-day. I 
am perfectly well and would not have missed this 
visit for hundreds of dollars. . . . 

"Two of the best Worcester Emigrants are among 
the prisoners confined at Lecompton. They were 
at first very badly treated, but are said to be better 
off now. Gov. Geary promised us yesterday that he 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS : 177 

would see that they had blankets. To-morrow I 
shall see them myself if possible." 

The following day, Mr. Higginson visited the 
prisoners at Lecompton and found that most of 
them were young men, "the flower of the youth of 
Lawrence." One of the guards he described as "an 
evil-looking scoundrel with fixed bayonet," and 
said: "It is singular how much alike all Slavery's 
officials look. I saw half a dozen times repeated the 
familiar features of my Boston friend, Mr. Asa O. 
Butman." Relating the suffering of the new set- 
tlers, Mr. Higginson quoted a man whom he had 
known at the East, who had a wife and nine chil- 
dren, but who said, " I have in my house no meat, no 
flour, no meal, no potatoes, no money to buy them, 
no prospect of a dollar ; but i" 7/ live or die in Kansas I " 
And he added, "Such is the spirit of multitudes, 
many of whom are as badly off as this man." 

In a letter to the "Tribune," dated Lawrence, 
October 4, Mr. Higginson said: — 

"Last Sunday I preached in this place (though I 
must say that I am commonly known here by a title 
which is elsewhere considered incompatible with 
even the Church Militant). It was quite an occa- 
sion; and I took for my text the one employed by 
Rev. John Martin the Sunday after he fought at 
Bunker Hill — Neh. iv, 14; 'Be not ye afraid of 



178 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

them ; remember the Lord, which is great and terri- 
ble, and fight for your brethren, your sons and your 
daughters, your wives and your houses.' " 

A Kansas correspondent of the "Christian Regis- 
ter" of September 26, 1857, heard Mr. Higginson 
preach on that occasion and thus described the 
event : — 

1 ' The place where we congregated was a low cham- 
ber over a store, built up of rough boards and lined 
with cloth tacked to the walls in lieu of plastering. 
The sacred desk was an impromptu affair made of a 
packing box covered with buffalo robes, while the 
Bible rested on a smaller box covered with a coarse 
blanket. I shall never forget how solemn and appro- 
priate the 4th chapter of Nehemiah seemed as Mr. 
H. read it so impressively in his opening service. . . . 
Every word of the excellent sermon which followed 
was full of magnetic power to me. It revived my 
drooping spirits, quickened my energies, and im- 
parted some of the faith, hope and strength I had 
so long needed." 

Mr. Higginson spoke again at Lawrence October 
4, and the next day went to Leavenworth to witness 
a "Border Ruffian election." On McCarty's door- 
steps (the principal tavern in the town) he over- 
heard some interesting remarks which he thus 
related : — 

"Said one man, just from Lecompton, 'Tell you 
what, we've found out one thing, there's a preacher 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 179 

going about here preaching politics/ 'Fact?' and 
'Is that so?' was echoed with virtuous indignation 
on all sides. * That's so/ continued he, 'and he fixes 
it this way; first, he has his text and preaches reli- 
gion; then he drops that and pitches into politics; 
and then he drops that, too, and begins about the 
sufferin' niggers' (with ineffable contempt); 'and 
what's more, he's here in Leavenworth now.' 
' What 's his name? ' exclaimed several eagerly. ' Just 
what I don't know,' was the sorrowful reply; 'and 
I should n't know him if I saw him; but he's here, 
boys, and in a day or two there '11 be some gentlemen 
here that know him.' (N.B. At my last speech 
in Lawrence, I was warned that three Missouri spies 
were present.) 'It's well we've got him here, to 
take care of him,' said one. 'Won't our boys enjoy 
running him out of town?' added another, affec- 
tionately; while I listened with pleased attention, 
thinking that I might, perhaps, afford useful infor- 
mation. But the ' gentlemen ' have not yet appeared, 
or else are in search of higher game." 

Disunion still seemed to the more radical thinkers 

the only cure for the prevailing troubles. On his 

return trip from the afflicted territory Mr. Higginson 

wrote: — 

" Steamboat ' Cataract,' 
aground on a bank in the Missouri River, 
Oct. 9th, 1856. 

" My best hope is that the contest may be at once 
transferred to more favorable soil, Nebraska or 
Iowa, and result in a disruption of the Union; for I 



i8o THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

am sure that the disease is too deep for cure without 
amputation. 

"I left here on Sept. 9th for six weeks; reached 
Nebraska City through Iowa in ten days, a weary 
stage journey. Staid nine days in and near Nebraska 
City, organizing and directing for a train of 150 
emigrants, and then travelled with them to Topeka 
in six days, camping at night; since then I have 
been in Topeka, Lecompton, Lenora and Leaven- 
worth. . . . Tell Sam I had an Allen's Rifle with 
me which is an improvement on Sharp's, but had no 
occasion to shoot anything with it except a superb 
hawk, whose wings I carry home as a Kansas trophy. 
Never have I been in any special danger, except that 
they talked of lynching me in Leavenworth, whither 
I went to witness an election ; I was the only person 
in town who knew my name or person; but I was 
a minister that had been 'preaching polities'; . . . 
as however I gave no information, two of them shot 
each other instead, just as our boat left the wharf." 

It is not strange that a sarcastic Buffalo paper, 
commenting on this errand of the Reverend Mr. 
Higginson's, said, "We do not know what denomi- 
nation of the gospel of peace claims him." 

At the twenty-fifth anniversary festival of the 
formation of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, Mr. Higginson thus spoke of his western 
visit : — 

"I found a great deal in Kansas. . . . But I did 
not go there even to see an underground railroad, 




THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 1 857 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 181 

for I had seen that in Massachusetts. I wanted to 
see something above the ground. All my life I had 
been a citizen of a Republic where I had seen 
my fellow-citizens retreating, and retreating, and 
retreating, before the Slave Power, and I heard 
that away off, a thousand miles west, there was one 
town where men had made their stand, and said to 
Slavery, 'Thus far, but no farther.' I went the 
thousand miles to see it, and saw it. I saw there the 
American Revolution, and every great Revolution 
of bygone days in still living progress. I was tired of 
reading of Leonidas; I wanted to see him. I was 
tired of reading of Lafayette; I wanted to see him. 
I saw in Kansas the history of the past, clothed in 
living flesh before me." 

In January, 1857, a call was issued for a "State 
Disunion Convention" to consider the expediency 
of a separation between free and slave States, and 
Mr. Higginson' s name led the signatures. This meet- 
ing was followed the next July by a call for a National 
Convention which was signed by Wendell Phillips, 
William Lloyd Garrison, Higginson, and 6400 others. 
This proposed convention, however, was never held. 

Some of his reasons for belief in disunion, Mr. 
Higginson expressed in a letter to Harriet Prescott, 
January, 1861: — 

"I cannot agree with you and Mr. Seward about 
the Union, because I think that the Free States 
without the Slave will instantly command an influ- 



182 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

ence, moral and material, which is denied us now. 
You know that even now the credit of Massachusetts 
Stocks is far higher in Europe than [that] of United 
States Stocks, and this symbolizes everything. A 
rough swearing mate of a vessel once told me 
he never dared own himself an American abroad, 
because he was so reproached in every port with 
slavery." 

While in St. Louis in 1856, Mr. Higginson attended 
the slave market, and wrote the following descrip- 
tion of the scene under the title " Assorted Lots of 
Young Negroes." This was printed in the "Tribune" 
at the time and widely copied, both in America and 
in England. 

"I have before been in other slave States, but 
never in Missouri. The first thing that struck me on 
arriving in this city was the apparent absence of the 
Negro race. In a crowd of a thousand persons on 
the levee this morning, assembled to witness the 
burning of six steamboats, I could not count ten 
black faces. I was told, in explanation, that the 
colored people were all ' uptown,' not in the business 
part of the city. 

"So, too, I searched the newspapers for slave 
advertisements, though I knew this city not to be a 
great mart for those commodities like Richmond; 
but in vain. At last, in a corner of the ' Republican,' 
I discovered the following : — 

'" Negroes Wanted. — I wish to purchase a large 
lot of Negroes, expressly for the Louisiana and 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 183 

Mississippi market, for which I will pay the highest 
cash prices. All those who have Negroes for sale 
would do well to give me a call. I can always be seen 
at the City Hotel, or at Mr. Thompson's Negro- 
yard, No. 67, Locust St., St. Louis, Mo. 

"'John Mattingly.' 

11 ' Negroes wanted and for sale. — Wanted and for 
sale Negroes of all kinds, at my office, No. 67, 
Locust St., between 26. and 3d Sts., St. Louis, Mo. 
Having a good and safe yard to board and keep 
Negroes, I will buy and sell on commission as low as 
any other house in this city. Please to give me a call. 

"'Corbin Thompson.' 

" I took an early opportunity to call on Mr. Corbin 
Thompson. I found him in the doorway of a little 
wooden office, like a livery-stable office in one of our 
cities; he being a large, lounging, good-natured 
looking man, not unlike a reputable stable-keeper in 
appearance and manner. Inside his stable, alas! I 
saw his dusky 'stock,' and he readily acceded to my 
desire to take a nearer look at them. 

"Behind the little office there was a little dark 
room, behind that a little kitchen, opening into a 
dirty little yard. This yard was surrounded by high 
brick walls, varied by other walls made of old iron 
plates, reaching twenty feet high. These various 
places were all swarming with Negroes, dirty and 
clean, from six years old to forty — perhaps two 
dozen in all, the majority being children under 
fourteen. 



184 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

" ' Fat and sleek as Harry Clay's,' said my conduc- 
tor, patting one on the head patriarchally. 

"Most of them had small paper fans, which they 
used violently. This little article of comfort looked 
very odd, amid such squalid raggedness as most of 
them showed. One was cooking, two or three wash- 
ing, and two playing euchre with a filthy pack of 
cards. The sun shone down intensely hot (it was 
noon) in the little brick yard, and they sat, lounged, 
or lay about, only the children seeming lively. 

"I talked a little with them, and they answered, 
some quietly, some with that mixture of obsequious- 
ness and impudence so common among slaves. Mr. 
Thompson answered all questions very readily. The 
'Negroes' or 'Niggers,' he said (seldom employing 
the Virginia phrases 'servants' or 'people'), came 
mostly from Missouri or Virginia, and were with 
him but a little while. 'Buy when I can and sell 
when I can, that's my way; and never ask no ques- 
tions, only in the way of trade. At this season, get 
a good many from travellers.' 

"On inquiry, he explained this mystery by adding 
that it was not uncommon for families visiting 
Northern watering-places to bring with them a likely 
boy or girl, and sell them to pay the expenses of the 
jaunt! This is a feature of the patriarchal institution 
which I think has escaped Mrs. Stowe. Hereafter I 
shall never see a Southern heiress at Newport with- 
out fancying I read on her ball-dress the names of 
the ' likely boy or girl ' who was sold for it. ' As for 
yonder Sambo and Dinah' (I meditated), 'no doubt, 
young Bulford Dashaway, Esq., is at this moment 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 185 

driving them out to Saratoga Lake, as a pair of 
blood-horses. O Miss Caroline Pettitoes, of Fifth 
Avenue, how odd it would be if, as you sit superb by 
his side, those four-legged cattle suddenly resumed 
the squalid two-legged condition in which I now 
behold them, in Thompson's Negro-yard, No. 67, 
Locust Street.' 

" I strolled back into the front office and sat down 
to see if anything turned up. The thing that turned 
up was a rather handsome, suburban-looking two- 
horse carriage, out of which stepped lazily a small, 
spare, gentlemanly man, evidently a favored patron 
of my host. After a moment's private talk Thompson 
went out, while the gentleman said abruptly to me, 
'Well, it is all bad enough, housekeeping, marketing, 
and all, but I'm — if servants ain't the worst of all.' 
We then talked a little, and I found him the pleas- 
antest type of a Southerner — courteous, kind, 
simple, a little imperious — finally, a man of prop- 
erty, member of the city Government, and living 
a little out of town. 

" Thompson came in and shook his head. 'Can't 

let Negroes to anybody, Mr. . Glad to sell, 

anyhow.' 

"Got a good article of a small girl?' said the 
gentleman suddenly. 

"Martha!' shouted the slave-dealer, and pres- 
ently three good articles, aged eleven, nine, and 
seven, came trotting in. I had not seen them before. 
Nice little pink frocks, not very dirty — barefooted, 
of course, but apparently well taken care of, and 
evidently sisters. With some manoeuvring, they 



1 86 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

were arranged in a line before my new acquaintance, 
the purchaser. 

"He fixed his eyes on Sue, a black marble statue, 
aged seven. Nothing could have been kinder than 

Mr. 's manner in addressing the little thing. 

'Will you like to come and live with me, and have 
some little girls to play with?' 

" (It is a little patriarchal, I said. That kind voice 
would win any child.) 

"I looked to see the merry African smile on the 
child's face. But no smile came. There was a 
moment's pause. 

" 'Speak up, child,' said the merchant roughly. 
But she did n't speak up, nor look up, either. Down 
went the black marble face, drooping down, down, 
till the chin rested on the breast of the little pink 
frock. Down, down came one big tear, and then 
another over the black marble cheeks ; and then the 
poor little wretch turned away to the wall, and burst 
into as hearty an agony of tears as your little idol 
Susy, or yours (my good New-England mother), 
might give way to, at such an offer from the very 
kindest man who ever chewed tobacco in the streets 
of Missouri! 

"Human nature is a rather unconquerable thing, 
after all, is n't it? 

"My kind purchaser looked annoyed, and turned 
away. The slave-trader gave an ominous look to the 
poor child, such as I had not seen on his face before. 
'Beg pardon, sir' (said he gruffly); 'they only came 
from Virginia yesterday, and have n't learnt how to 
treat gentlemen yet' (with an emphasis). 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 187 

"Poor little Sue! 

"The purchaser next turned to Martha, the elder 
sister, a bright Topsy-looking thing. 

"'What's that on her cheek,' he asked, pointing 
to a sort of scar or streak of paleness. Martha 
grinned. 

"'Somebody's whacked her chops, most likely,' 
said the slave-trader, coolly (in whose face I saw 
nothing good-natured after that). Nothing more 
was said about it. 

"The gentleman drew the child to him, felt the 
muscles of her arm, and questioned her a little. Her 
price was 700 dollars, and little Sue's 450 dollars. 

"'Well, Martha,' said he at last, 'wouldn't you 
like to go with me and have a pleasant home?' 

"Strange to say, the African smile left Martha's 
merry face, too. 'Please, sir,' said she, 'I wish I 
could stay with my mother.' 

"'Confound the girls,' said the good-natured 
purchaser, turning to me in despair; 'they must be 
sold to somebody, you know. Of course, I can't buy 
the whole of them, and the mother, too.' Of course 
not; and there was the whole story in a nutshell. 

' ' ' Nonsense, gals, ' said Thompson ; ' your mother '11 
be up here, maybe, some day.' (Pleasant prospect, in 
the lottery of life, for three 'articles' under twelve 
years.) 

"On inquiry it appeared that the mother was in 
Virginia, and might or might not be sent to St. Louis 
for sale. The intention was, however, to sell the 
children in a day or two, together or separately, or 
else to send them south with Mr. Mattingly. 



1 88 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

" To avert this, I hoped earnestly that my good- 
natured friend would buy one or more of the poor 
things. ' For,' said he to me, ' I mean to bring her up 
well. She'll be a pet for the children — black or 
white it will make no difference — and while I live 
I shan't sell her — that is while it is possible to help 
it.' (A formidable reservation, considering the con- 
dition of most Southern estates.) 

" The little pink frocks were ordered to stand off, 
and a bargain was finally struck for Martha, quite 
to Mr. Thompson's chagrin, who evidently hoped to 
sell Sue, and would, no doubt, have done so, but for 
her ignorance 'how to treat gentlemen.' 

"'Girl is sound, I suppose?' carelessly inquired 
the purchaser. 

'"Wind and limb,' responded the trader. 'But 
strip her naked and examine every inch of her, if you 
wish,' he quickly added; ' I never have any disguises 
with my customers.' 

"So ended the bargain, and I presently took my 
leave. I had one last glance at little Sue. It is not 
long since I set foot on the floating wreck of an 
unknown vessel at sea, and then left it drifting 
away in the darkness alone. But it was sadder to 
me to think of that little wreck of babyhood drift- 
ing off alone into the ocean of Southern crime and 
despair. 

"St. Louis must unquestionably be a very religious 
place, however, for in returning to my hotel I passed 
a church with inscriptions in four different languages. 
There was Jehovah in Hebrew, 'Deo Uno et Trino,' 
'In honorem S. Ludovici.' Finally in English and 



A RIDE THROUGH KANSAS 189 

French, 'My house shall be called the house of 
prayer,' with the rest of the sentence, in both cases, 
omitted. Singular accident, is n't it? 

" I forgot to mention that I asked Mr. Thompson, 
out of the dozen children in his 'yard,' how many 
had their parents or mothers with them. ' Not one,' 
he answered, as if rather surprised at the question; 
' 1 take 'em as they come, in lots. Hardly ever have 
a family.' 

"'I suppose you would rather keep a family 
together?' I put in, suggestively. 

"'Yes,' he answered carelessly. 'Can't think 
much about that, though. Have to shut up shop 
pretty quick, if I did. Have to take 'em as they 
come.' 

"This was evident enough, and I only insert it in 
the faint hope of enlightening the minds of those 
verdant innocents who still believe that the separa- 
tion of families is a rare occurrence, when every New 
Orleans newspaper contains a dozen advertisements 
of 'Assorted lots of young Negroes.' " 



XI 

JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 

Although John Brown's name was familiar to all 
who were interested in the Kansas struggle, Mr. 
Higginson's first interview with him was in the 
winter of 1858. At this time Brown wrote to him 
saying, "I have been told that you are both a true 
man and a true Abolitionist, and I partly believe the 
whole story.' ' In this letter, he asked aid for what 
he called ''secret service/ ' stating that he should 
need from five to eight hundred dollars within sixty 
days, "for the perfecting of by far the most impor- 
tant undertaking of my whole life." Mr. Higginson 
asked if this project was connected with the under- 
ground railway and received this reply: "Rail-Road 
business on a somewhat extended scale is the iden- 
tical object for which I am trying to get means." 
This letter, dated February 12, contained an urgent 
invitation to meet John Brown with Sanborn and 
others at Peterborough, New Hampshire. Not being 
able to do this, Mr. Higginson met Brown in Boston 
in March. The impression made on him as described 
in "Cheerful Yesterdays" was that of simply "a 
high-minded, unselfish, belated Covenanter." 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 191 

The plan which Brown proposed was to get to- 
gether bands of fugitive slaves in Virginia and either 
colonize them in the mountain fastnesses or guide 
them to Canada. In this project Mr. Higginson and 
his friends were willing to cooperate and to help 
raise the needed money. "I am always ready,' ' 
Higginson wrote to John Brown, "to invest money 
in treason, but at present have none to invest.' ' 

At this juncture a certain Hugh Forbes, who had 
drilled John Brown and his men in guerrilla warfare, 
threatened to expose his plans unless unreasonable 
demands for money could be met. Thereupon, the 
majority of Brown's Boston advisers advocated post- 
poning the whole affair until the next winter or 
spring. This proposed delay made Mr. Higginson 
very impatient, and he wrote to Brown, May 7, "I 
utterly protest against any postponement." He also 
wrote in the same vein to Theodore Parker, saying, 
" If I had the wherewithal, I would buy out the other 
stockholders and tell our veteran to go on." To 
Brown again, May 18, he wrote, "I, for one, am 
willing to leave the whole matter to you. . . . The 
sum raised by me was all I can possibly provide, 
but I have written to the others, strongly urging 
them not to give up the ship." When Mr. Higginson 
talked this matter over with Brown, meeting him in 
Boston again about June I, the latter sympathized 



192 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

with this opposition to delay, and said, to quote 
a letter of Higginson's describing the interview, 
"If he [Brown] had the means he would not lose a 
day. At my wondering that the others did not agree 
with us, he said the reason was they were not men 
of action. But the sly old veteran added he had 
not said this to them." A scrap of paper pasted on 
the letter adds: " I went to see Dr. Howe and found 
that things had ended far better than I supposed. 
The Kansas committee had put some $500 in gold 
into his [Brown] hands and all the arms with only 
the understanding that he should go to Kansas and 
then be left to his own discretion. He went off in 
good spirits." 

In October, 1858, Sanborn wrote to the Worcester 
clergyman that Brown was anxious about future 
operations, and asked if Higginson could do any- 
thing for him before the following spring. In March, 
1859, and again in April, Sanborn appealed to 
Higginson for more funds; and May 1, the latter 
wrote to Brown that he had drawn so largely for 
similar purposes in the past few years he could raise 
no more money. "My own loss of confidence," he 
added, "is also in the way — loss of confidence not 
in you, but in the others who are concerned in the 
measure. Those who were so easily disheartened 
last spring may be deterred now. . . . Did I follow 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 193 

only my own inclination, without thinking of other 
ties, I should join you in person, if I could not in 
purse." And he declared that he longed to see Brown 
''set free from timid advisers." In June, Sanborn 
wrote to Higginson that John Brown had set out 
on his expedition, having secured some eight hun- 
dred dollars; and September 4, he again wrote, be- 
seeching him to raise fifty dollars if possible. 

After the sudden defeat of Brown's enterprise, 
followed by his arrest and imprisonment, most of 
the friends who had been active in assisting his pro- 
ject went temporarily to Canada or to Europe to 
avoid threatened prosecution, but Mr. Higginson 
stood his ground, declaring it a duty "to at least 
give him [Brown] their moral support on the witness 
stand." 

The next step was the attempt to provide able 
counsel for Brown and his fellow-prisoners. A cir- 
cular was printed, November 2, 1859, asking for 
contributions to this end and signed by S. E. Sewall, 
Dr. Howe, R. W. Emerson, and T. W. Higginson. 
Appended to the circular, which is preserved in the 
Boston Public Library, is this note in Mr. Higgin- 
son's handwriting and signed by him: "An expense of 
about $1000 is already incurred for counsel. Mrs. 
Brown must also be aided to join her husband, and 
her two widowed daughters-in-law, aged 20 and 16, 



194 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

need help greatly." Meetings were held in Boston 
and Worcester, in which Mr. Higginson took part, 
to plead for help for Brown's family. An anonymous 
letter from Alabama to the militant pastor is in- 
cluded in the John Brown Collection, condemning 
him for trying to procure counsel for the prisoner, 
and warning him that should he and his friends 
attempt ' ' any such work a little farther South, we 
will burn every mother's son of you." 

Mr. Higginson's wish now was to rescue Brown 
from prison, but the latter absolutely prohibited any 
such attempt. Thinking that perhaps Mrs. Brown 
could shake her husband's determination and ulti- 
mately help in his rescue, Mr. Higginson travelled to 
the mountains of North Elba, New York, to take 
her to visit him in prison. This visit to Brown's 
home the author has described in a paper called 
"John Brown's Household" included in his "Con- 
temporaries." In this article he says: — 

" It had been my privilege to live in the best society 
all my life — namely, that of Abolitionists and fugi- 
tive slaves. . . . But I had not known the Browns. 
. . . Here was a family out of which four young men 
had within a fortnight been killed. I say nothing of 
a father under sentence of death and a brother flee- 
ing for his life, but only speak of those killed. . . . 
Yet there was not one of that family who could not 
pronounce that awful word with perfect quietness. 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 195 

... To the Browns killing means simply dying — 
nothing more ; one gate into heaven, and that one a 
good deal frequented by their family. . . . 

"I was the first person who had penetrated their 
solitude from the outer world since the thunderbolt 
had fallen. . . . They asked but one question after 
I had told them how little hope there was of acquit- 
tal or rescue — ' Does it seem as if freedom were to 
gain or lose by this?' That was all." 

After this visit, Brown's daughter Ruth wrote to 
thank Mr. Higginson for his " soul-cheering letters," 
and to say, "How much sunshine you brought into 
our desolate homes is left only for us to tell." In his 
own account of the visit, Mr. Higginson records that 
he spoke to Salmon Brown about the sacrifices of 
their family. "He looked up in a quiet, manly way, 
which I shall never forget, and said briefly, ' I some- 
times think that is what we came into the world for 
— to make sacrifices. ' . . . And it seemed to me 
that any one must be very unworthy the society I 
had been permitted to enter who did not come forth 
from it a wiser and a better man." 

The next scheme to enlist Mr. Higginson's inter- 
est, after Brown's sentence had been pronounced, 
was a plan of revenge formed by a Boston aboli- 
tionist, Lysander Spooner, to kidnap the governor 
of Virginia and keep him as "hostage for the safety 
of Brown." A scrap of paper exists on which Mr. 



i 9 6 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Higginson had written, November 14, 1859, "Would 
it not be practicable for a party of men to go in a 

steamboat to kidnap in the night and hold him 

as a hostage for the safety of ." Spooner wrote 

Higginson, November 20, that the men, a pilot, and 
a boat could be furnished, and adjured the latter to 
come at once and persuade men in Boston to furnish 
the money. November 22 , Le Barnes, another sym- 
pathizer in this wild project, wrote to give the price 
of tugs, and November 27, he wrote from New York, 
"The men are ready and determined. . . . They 
are confident, strange as it may seem to us, of suc- 
cess, but they want money. ... It is for you in 
Boston to say 'go' or 'stay.'" But owing to the im- 
possibility of raising funds the plan was abandoned. 

John Brown wrote a letter of farewell to Mr. Hig- 
ginson, November 22, 1859, expressing deep grati- 
tude for his visit to North Elba, thanking him for 
sending his family money and newspapers, especially' 
the latter, and adding, "Truly you have proved 
yourself to be a friend in need. ,, 

After Brown's execution a project was formed by 
the most daring of his friends to rescue the two 
members of his party — Stevens and Hazlett — who 
still awaited trial. While this scheme was maturing, 
the journalist, James Redpath, wrote to Higginson 
that he had reason to believe the clergyman was 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 197 

watched by spies, and warning him that letters must 
be written and received with great caution. Funds 
were raised for the proposed rescue, and Mr. Higgin- 
son sent a messenger to Kansas to enlist Captain 
James Montgomery as leader of the enterprise, the 
rally ing-point being Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 
February, i860, Mr. Higginson arrived there under 
the name of Charles P. Carter. When Montgomery 
came with a few valuable recruits, — called in let- 
ters and telegrams " machines," — Mr. Higginson 
jotted down on paper, which can still be seen, a 
list of the lions in the way. The Kansas leader was 
not dismayed by this array of difficulties, which 
included a week's journey through a mountainous 
country by night, carrying arms, blankets, and 
provisions ; attacking a building — the Charlestown 
jail — protected by a wall fourteen feet high and 
defended by sentinels without and within; and fol- 
lowed by a retreat with prisoners and wounded by 
daylight. Montgomery, however, insisted on first 
exploring, with but one companion, the region to be 
traversed. 

In the midst of these plottings, Mr. Higginson 
wrote to his wife : — 

"I was so amused this morning. When Mr. 
Winkle has been in the mud [in ' Pickwick '] the 
hostler brushes him down, shooing him and soothing 



198 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

him with a gentle noise all the time as if currying a 
horse. My pantaloons were deluged with mud from 
Broadway [New York] and the Irish waiter did pre- 
cisely that to me." 

And a little later, he wrote: — 

' ' I shall be back from Yellow Springs a week from 
to-morrow night. If he [Montgomery] is not back 
then, and if the ground is still covered with snow, I 
shall probably not wait for him, but go home and be 
on call. . . . Give me credit for wisdom in not throw- 
ing up the whole Western trip and going with him." 

While Montgomery was absent on this secret 
errand Mr. Higginson went as far west as Ohio to 
lecture, returning in time to hear the disappointing 
verdict. On reaching Charlestown, Montgomery's 
associate, Soule, feigned intoxication, and being con- 
fined in the same jail, obtained an interview with 
Brown's confederates. 1 The prisoners considered all 
attempts at rescue as hopeless; and heavy snow-falls, 
combined with the fact that both authorities and 
the community were on the alert, converted Mont- 
gomery to the same opinion. Thus the bold scheme 
of rescuing the two doomed men was reluctantly 
abandoned. 

After returning home Mr. Higginson wrote to one 
of them — Stevens — the following letter, March 12, 
i860: — 

1 Villard's John Brown. 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 199 

" Dear Friend, — 

" As I cannot see you in the body I feel a strong 
wish to stretch out my hand to you once and say 
God bless you. 

"You may not remember me, but I saw you in 
September, 1856, at Nebraska City when you were 
coming out of the Territory with Gen. Lane. . . . 

" Death is only a step in life and there is no more 
reason why we should fear to go from one world into 
another than from one room into another. . . . The 
world where John Brown is cannot be a bad one to 
live in. . . . My wife would have been willing that 
I should risk my life to save yours had that been 
possible." 

Recalling these events in October, i860, Mr. 
Higginson wrote in his journal : — 

"Last year at this time I was worn and restless 
with inability to do anything for John Brown. Not 
that I grudged him his happy death — but it seemed 
terrible to yield him to Virginia. The effort to rescue 
Stevens and Hazlett — undertaken on my sole 
responsibility — restored my self-respect. It did not 
fail like the Burns rescue through the timidity of 
others — but simply through the impracticability 
of the thing. I would not have accepted any one's 
assurance of that impracticability except Mont- 
gomery's. 

1 ' I think it was a disappointment to me not to be 
summoned to testify before the [Senate] Committee, 
nor do I know why I was passed over, after Wil- 
son's assurance. Certainly I should have told them 



200 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

all I knew — and whether that would have done 
good or harm, I cannot now say. 

"So far as John Brown is concerned, I should like 
this for an epitaph, ' The only one of John Brown's 
friends and advisers who was not frightened by the 
silly threats of Hugh Forbes into desiring that year's 
delay which ruined the enterprise.' I had the old 
man's own assurance that in his secret soul he re- 
garded this delay as an act of timidity — and acted 
on it only because those who held the purse insisted." 

Afterwards, in 1862, Mr. Higginson wrote a friend 
about these stirring events : — 

" I remember in a letter which I thought might be 
the last I should ever write to you, when I had sent 
for Montgomery and seven men from Kansas, be- 
cause I could find nobody in New England, and we 
lay in wait a fortnight in Harrisburg hoping vainly 
to penetrate Virginia and rescue Stevens and 
Hazlett — I remember then telling you how I had 
always held to a Mohammedan proverb that no 
prophet is called of God till he has reached the age of 
40 — and to-day I am only 39, so I don't think my 
time has come yet to do the thing I was born for — 
but certainly I never enjoyed anything more." 

Many years later, in 1879, Colonel Higginson 
went to Charlestown, Virginia, to see this very 
prison. When he looked at the high and apparently 
impregnable wall he felt fully convinced that Mont- 
gomery's judgment was sound. 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 201 

After the tragic death of Brown, there came a 
renewal of the old conflict in Boston between the 
Pro-Slavery men and the " Antis." Wendell Phillips 
spoke once a month on Sunday at Music Hall and it 
was necessary to guard the building to prevent the 
meetings from being broken up by riotous young men. 
Mr. Higginson described this new duty in a letter, 
dated January, 1861, referring to the annual meeting 
of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society: — 

"This week has been given over to mobs; I have 
been one of the captains of the fifties spoken of in 
Scripture; that is we had sixty men armed and 
organized, under my direction, to protect the plat- 
form and Wendell Phillips. Part were Germans and 
part English; this was done prior to the Sunday 
meeting at Music Hall, but there was no danger 
then ; before the end of the convention it grew rather 
formidable. It was worth it all to see Mr. Emerson 
addressing the meeting and interrupted with all 
kinds of insults and he so utterly undisturbed, — 
not stooping even to control and put it down, which 
might perhaps just then have been done — but rising 
above it by sheer dignity. Wendell Phillips never 
was so buoyant and charming as through it all. 
Many have always had the impression that he was 
not personally courageous because he had not the 
sort of boyish courage that I and many others get 
credit for: but his is far higher, not a Puritan cour- 
age like John Brown's either, but a sort of highborn 
chivalrous courage, careless of danger, despising it 



202 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

too utterly to give it a thought — such as one fancies 
Montrose for instance might have had. We who were 
with him in the midst of great danger, possible and 
even actual, were all equally struck with this. We 
had to control him, he was reckless of danger not 
from adventurousness nor from ignorance but be- 
cause he really could not stoop to keep it in mind." 

In an estimate of the radical leaders of the day, 
found in his journal for 1857, Mr. Higginson said of 
William Lloyd Garrison: — 

1 'Of all the heroes of ancient or modern days, 
that man stands most firmly on his feet. If he knew 
that at his next word of truth, the whole solar sys- 
tem would be annihilated, his voice, in saying it, 
would not tremble." 

Apropos of the duty of guarding Phillips, the 
Worcester clergyman again wrote to his mother, 
January, 1861: — 

"I spent yesterday in Boston for a wonder, not 
having been away on Sunday for a long time. They 
sent for me to come down because it was feared that 
there would be trouble at the Music Hall as Wendell 
Phillips was to speak . . . and the Mayor refused 
to have any Police. The previous time when he 
spoke there were 200 police and trouble at that. So 
we had a meeting at the German ' Turners ' Hall on 
Saturday evening, and they appointed me Com- 
mander in chief and organized into small companies 
of 6 each with a leader, and Sunday morning we 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 203 

posted them in different parts of the Hall and carried 
the meeting quietly through, though there were a 
few symptoms of trouble at first — and took W. P. 
home afterward, with quite a crowd around, — so 
that all went well. Gov. Andrew brought a good 
deal of pressure to bear on the Mayor and he sent 
police after all — but not in uniform so that it was 
not generally known till afterwards. As there is to 
be an Anti-Slavery Convention next Thursday and 
Friday it was thought important to have a good 
organization and make sure of carrying the meetings 
all through — but I think everything will go well 
now." 

In February, Mr. Higginson spent another Sun- 
day in Boston, to help protect Wendell Phillips, 
and wrote that "a thousand people or so waited on 
Winter Street to see him — friends, foes and idlers 
— while we quietly walked him out by the Bum- 
stead Place entrance/ ' 

When the war-cloud burst in April, 1861, and 
there was alarm about the safety of Washington, 
Mr. Higginson conceived the daring scheme of 
recalling Montgomery and his men from Kansas and 
going with them into the mountains of Virginia to 
divert the attention of the Confederacy from the 
national capital. In reference to this plan he wrote 
to his mother : — 

"I vibrate between rumors of wars — and high 
school examinations. Since our troops went, things 



204 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

are quieter, though many are drilling. Think how 
honorable to Massachusetts that her first troops 
marched through New York before the famous 7th 
Regiment had started. . . . 

"If you see I have enlisted don't believe it yet, 
but I am trying to get means for equipping a picked 
Company for John Brown, Jr. — to be used on the 
Pennsylvania border. How much I may have to do 
with the undertaking if it ever comes to anything — 
the future course of events must determine. I want 
at least to get the name of John Brown rumored on 
the border and then the whole party may come back 
and go to bed — they will frighten Virginia into fits 
all the same." 

With Dr. S. G. Howe's help, he raised money for 
this purpose and consulted Governor Andrew, who 
gave him a letter of introduction to Governor Curtin 
of Pennsylvania. This letter Mr. Higginson took in 
person to Harrisburg. Some doubts arose in Gover- 
nor Andrew's mind after sending the letter and he 
wrote another to the Pennsylvania governor advis- 
ing caution. In this second letter the Massachusetts 
governor said of Mr. Higginson: "He is a man cap- 
able of facing great perils, of gallant and ardent 
spirit, and one whose plans I would not endorse in 
blank or in advance. You may find on enquiry that 
he proposes some scheme not only courageous, but 
wise." Governor Curtin, after talking with his 
eager visitor and reflecting upon his plans, wrote to 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 205 

Governor Andrew that such a move would precipitate 
a border war, and that the time for such warfare had 
not yet arrived. He also said that if Mr. Higginson 
should enter western Virginia ' ' with the kind of troops 
he purposes to enlist it would not only destroy the 
loyal sentiment of that part of the State, but would 
influence the people of Kentucky, Tennessee, and 
Missouri." This project was therefore abandoned. 
On Mr. Higginson's return to Worcester, he was 
offered a position as major of the fourth battalion 
of infantry. This he declined, partly from a feeling 
of unfitness, and partly on account of his wife's 
invalid condition. He also felt doubtful about the 
Government's attitude on slavery, and feared he 
might be ordered to return fugitive slaves to their 
owners. However, he continued to study military 
tactics; took fencing lessons; and before going into 
active service, had belonged to five "drill clubs." In 
his journal of January, 1862, he gives a list of these 
clubs, he having been president of two of them, and 
records practising with rifle and bayonet, as well as 
studying the manual of arms. One of these clubs, 
"The Old City Guard," was formed, he wrote, of "a 
clique of very small men with whom good sense had 
one long tussle till it broke up. . . . Disbanded with 
regret and thought I should join the militia." But 
after a few months of this work he wearied of it and 



206 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

recorded that he felt "a certain satisfaction in hav- 
ing escaped a monotonous winter's drill at the seat of 
peace — the Potomac." 

In the midst of these exciting public duties, the 
youthful delight which Mr. Higginson had found in 
nature revived. From his journal or " Field Book," 
kept at the time, these extracts are taken : — 

"I need ask for nothing else when I find myself 
coming round again into all that old happiness in 
Nature, which my years of hard labor seemed to have 
dulled. I verily believe that I am to have it all again. 
A thousand delicate tendrils seem to be tremulously 
thrusting forth within me, to bind me to the blissful 
world once more. What an exchange for the life of a 
minister — St. Lawrence bound to a gridiron, with 
every seventh bar redhot. ... If I could obtain but 
a slight addition to my certain income, so as to keep 
a saddle horse, I should have nothing more to ask of 
the world. ... I see nothing but war which is now 
likely to change my life and it may be that war is the 
last of these public schools which I am destined to go 
through. But that I shall certainly enter, if I can. 

" Much of my enjoyment of Nature seems to come 
from the fact that all animals and even plants are 
more human to me than they appear to most people. 
When I come suddenly on a beautiful flower in a 
lonely place it is like meeting with a rare person 
there, and I never forget that association. So, birds 
are kindred and children to me. . . . There are out- 
door moments so rich, it seems as if a single walk 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 207 

would furnish an essay. But I do not wish my essays 
to be milk but cream. They must skim the wealth of 
many days and nights, besides 36 silent years be- 
hind. . . . How inexpressibly weak it would be in me 
to wish for money or more fame, when by modera- 
tion and patience I have secured not merely a cer- 
tain amount of usefulness, but the rare and unspeak- 
able luxury of living precisely as I would wish to 
live. Had I unlimited wealth or fame I do not see 
that it could add anything important to my sum- 
mer life, while it would certainly bring many new 
and great drawbacks. ... I enjoy it [literature] so 
much more than any other form of work that I am 
sure it must be the best thing for me. With our 
moderate aims and desires it will not be necessary 
for me to become a drudge, or of so over-doing as to 
produce distaste for it. But for M.'s ill-health and 
the disturbed condition of the country (and in both 
cases I see some indications of hope beyond) — my 
sky would be unusually cloudless, so far as I can 
compare it with that of others." 

The uncontrollable desire to have a share in the 
war was at times manfully quelled and dismissed as 
the diary under date of August 15, 1861, shows: — 

"I have thoroughly made up my mind that my 
present duty lies at home — that this war, for which 
I long and for which I have been training for years, 
is just as absolutely unobtainable for me as a share 
in the wars of Napoleon. This being the case, let me 
swallow down all rebellious desires and philosophi- 



208 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

cally use the opportunities and enjoyments I have. 
Perhaps good may yet come from this enforced 
abstinence." 

The same purpose is more fully expressed in this 
letter written to a friend : — 

11 1 have been much taken up, of course, with the 
exciting and exhausting affairs of this summer. . . . 
At one time I saw prospects of coming nearer to the 
scene of action, but my plans of irregular service 
failed, and it would be very wrong for me to enlist 
for three years or even one, so that I am just turning 
it all into a school for patience. There is a certain 
experience of action and danger which is very fasci- 
nating to me and to which I should take perhaps as 
readily as most men, — but I always turn very easily 
to the thought of immortality and cannot doubt that 
all experiences which are really needed will be forth- 
coming first or last. It seems funny, to be sure, to 
wait for heaven to supply the place of secessionists, 
but I have n't a doubt of some good and exciting 
training being afforded, beyond this limited chance 
we have here." 

It was hard to always exercise this philosophy in 
the face of such experiences as the following : — 

"Worcester, Aug. 1861. 

"We had Col. Leonard's regiment on their way to 

the war also, and the 'John Brown War song' was 

sounding through the streets all the evening. . . . 

I never heard anything more impressive and it 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 209 

seemed a wonderful piece of popular justice to make 
his name the War song." 

The sense of duty to his country, in distinction 
from the claims of home, was also aroused by such 
reflections as these: — 

"It seems to me of the greatest importance that 
men of Anti-Slavery principle should take their full 
share in this war. . . . 

"A great many Anti-Slavery men, all over the 
state, are holding aloof, and can only be brought in 
by leaders in whom they have confidence. 

" . . . Some of our most influential young men 
here have been telling me, for some time, that they 
would enlist under me and nobody else, and they 
stand ready to raise one company or more, here. 
And from letters I have had, at different times, I 
know that there are many who would prefer to serve 
under some man of anti-slavery sympathies." 

In the autumn of the same year, feeling the need 
of more time for literary work, Mr. Higginson sev- 
ered his connection with the Free Church. A unique 
tribute to his popularity was the gift of a basket of 
artificial fruit, the contents having been made from 
the hair of members of his congregation! 

On Thanksgiving Day, he expressed his satisfac- 
tion with the new leisure: — 

"Years I have wasted in efforts to do people good 
— preaching, speaking, lecturing, conventioning, 



210 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

organizing, politics, newspaper writing, private 
philanthropies, etc. — in all of which I have suc- 
ceeded as well as the average, perhaps better — but 
never with that hearty zest a man feels when he 
knows he is leading his true life. Now I have 
wrenched myself away from all these things, feeling 
that I have served my time at them and got my 
Experience — and I have come back to the one 
thing which I always thoroughly enjoyed, a quiet 
life with literature and nature. It has cost me all 
these years to dare to do this." 

These dreams of peace were suddenly dispelled in 
the autumn of 1861. He wrote to his mother: — 

" I have authority from Governor Andrew to take 
preliminary steps toward raising a regiment, which 
when formed will be placed under charge of an U.S. 
officer — probably Captain Saxton of the naval ex- 
pedition, who is an anti-slavery man. At any rate 
the Colonel is to be satisfactory to me and I to be 
under him." 

But by the time several companies for the new 
regiment had been recruited in different parts of the 
State, an order was given to stop all recruiting. Mr. 
Higginson had been hard at work for three months, 
and his disappointment at this turn in affairs is 
shown by this entry in his journal, January, 1862: — 

"Went through all the interest and hope of my 
regimental prospects, and came out of it all again. 
. . . Whatever sorrows or regrets there were I dis- 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO ARMS 211 

posed of in [writing] my Letter to a Young Con- 
tributor and have passed it all by." 

However, in the following spring, hope was re- 
awakened, for a new nine-months' regiment was 
called out and the irrepressible ex-clergyman opened 
a recruiting office in Worcester. He wrote, March 3, 
1862: — 

"The day after the call for 9 months troops I 
called on the Mayor and told him I did not wish to 
be exempted on the score of profession, not being 

properly a clergyman and it is settled with M 

that if drafted I shall go. 

"Yesterday it grew obvious that the number of 9 
months men might be raised without a draft and it 
suddenly became clear to me . . . that I ought to go 
for that time, even without a draft. I have not men- 
tioned it to M and may not have strength to 

carry it through, but it seems to me that if I do not 
I shall forfeit my self respect and be a broken man 
for the remainder of my days. I have sacrificed the 
public duty to this domestic one as long as I can 
bear." 

In August he wrote to his mother: — 

11 1 have something to say which may surprise you. 
... I have obtained authority to enlist a military 
company for 9 months, I go as Captain. . . . 

"I do not think I should ever have made up my 
mind to go for 3 years — but those recruits were 
raised slowly here, and I decided that I never could 



212 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

hold up my head again, in Worcester or even else- 
where, if I did not vindicate my past words by ac- 
tions though tardy. It seemed to me also, which is 
more important, that beyond a certain point one has 
no right to concentrate his whole life on one private 
duty." 

Two weeks later he told her : — 

" I am going to Boston to-day with my company 
roll full, to get authority to choose officers; and next 
week we expect to go into barracks in a large build- 
ing a little way out of town. . . . Everybody praises 
the material of my company and their appearance on 
the street." 

The inner conflict was over, as his journal shows, 
under date of August 31 : — 

"Since I have decided on my duty, my whole 
path has been perfectly clear; I have been like a ship 
in [the] bay, all other paths obstructed, but this one 
perfectly clear. . . . 

" I see at every moment that all the currents of my 
life converge in this direction and that my time is 
absolutely come. . . . What I could write I have 
written and should I never write anything more, no 
matter. So far as any personal plans of my own are 
concerned, I am absolutely free and could I leave 

M out of view could die to-morrow with no 

feeling but of a happy confidence in the Eternal 
Laws, not unmingled with a sweet curiosity." 

To his mother, he wrote : — 



JOHN BROWN AND THE CALL TO, ARMS 213 

"Lincoln House, 
"Worcester, Sept. 7, 1862. 

"I have my commission and we go into barracks 
when they are ready. ... I drill my company every 
afternoon two hours out doors and enjoy it much." 

And later in the same month he added : — 

" I feel just like a father of a family when I go up 
to the quarters at meal times and see my sage first 
sergeant taking tea . . . sitting . . . behind a pine 
board, eating baked apples, illumined by a stearine 
dip stuck in a potato. Or later when four beautiful 
voices sing quartettes. My sergeants hold evening 
prayers, to which many of the company go, some- 
times half; and at nine there is a roll-call, after 
which all go to bed and nine hundred men snore in 
concert in one vast hall, with scarce a partition 
between. 

" At five a.m. comes a rolling of drums, like churn- 
ing and boiling in one, which is the reveille ... to 
which all the men bundle up and one commis- 
sioned officer at least to each Company — then 
drill from 6 to 7 and then breakfast and four hours 
more, drilling through the day." 

A month later the new captain reported : — 

"We are sailing smoothly now at the camp. . . . 
They cannot be said to love me, and I heard yester- 
day of an inebriated Irish private singing along 
Main St., 'Old Higgie is so strict, so strict/ etc., 
while another in a similar condition came to the 



214 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

company quarters yesterday and asked for me, 
saying he was drunk and wished to go to the guard- 
house.' ' 

In November, he wrote that they had everything 
but guns and might be ordered off at any time, and 
on the following day he telegraphed his mother, "We 
have orders to leave this week." But he was still in 
the Worcester barracks a fortnight later, when he 
received a thrilling letter from Brigadier-General 
Saxton, of the Department of the South, offering 
him the command of a regiment of freed slaves. 



XII 

THE BLACK REGIMENT 

Before resigning his commission in the 51st Massa- 
chusetts, Mr. Higginson went to South Carolina to 
make sure that the new regiment of freed slaves was 
really more than a scheme. Satisfied with his survey 
of the ground, he eagerly accepted General Saxton's 
offer. When he returned home and announced his 
decision, a lively niece exclaimed, "Will not Uncle 
Wentworth be in bliss! A thousand men, every one 
as black as a coal." 

On his way to take command, when the steamer 
was nearing Charleston, he wrote, November 23, 
1862: — 

"As I approach the mysterious land I am more 
and more impressed with my good fortune in having 
this novel and uncertain career open before me. . . . 
Here is ... a position of great importance; as many 
persons have said, the first man who organizes and 
commands a successful black regiment will perform 
the most important Service in the history of the war. 
... To say that I would rather do it than anything 
else in the world is to say little; it is such a master- 
piece of felicitous opportunity that all casualties of 
life or death appear trivial in connexion with it."_ 



216 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

A few days later the new colonel recorded that his 
only discomfort came from the cold nights, and that 
he was perfectly satisfied he was doing his duty. He 
was most warmly received by the other officers, and 
wrote to his mother, " Fancy 500 black faces at dress 
parade, and 2 red legs to each face." 

For two months the regiment remained quietly 
in camp near Beaufort, South Carolina, and this 
proved a fortunate opportunity for Colonel Higgin- 
son, as it gave time to get his soldiers into fighting 
trim. He succeeded in securing his friend Dr. Rog- 
ers as surgeon, and entered into his new life with an 
enthusiasm which was contagious. He wrote to his 
mother that his whole faculties had been switched off 
in a new direction, and that if he did not come home 
" jet black" she ought to be very grateful. " Do not 
regret," he added, "that I am here. I should have 
missed the best fortune of my life had I not come 
and this I should say were I recalled to-morrow." 

One of the officers of this regiment, the late Rever- 
end A. W. Jackson, wrote an account of his life as 
captain under Colonel Higginson, and from his un- 
published manuscript these facts are taken. The 
men were undisciplined and undrilled and the offi- 
cers despondent and sceptical about the possibility 
of making soldiers out of plantation slaves. The low 
esteem in which the black regiment was held by 




COLONEL THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 1 862 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 217 

white regiments also made the officers discontented. 
The new Colonel's arrival at once infused fresh cour- 
age into these faint hearts. "He was a born com- 
mander," wrote Captain Jackson. When General 
Saxton, somewhat later, witnessed the dress parade 
of this regiment, he said of its Colonel that he knew 
of no other man who could have magically brought 
the blacks under a military discipline that made the 
camp " one of the most enviable." Colonel Higgin- 
son's service for his men was summed up in one 
sentence by Jackson: "He met a Slave; he made 
him a Man." 

This officer relates his surprise when he discovered 
that the Colonel was a writer, and his delight in a copy 
of "Outdoor Papers" that was loaned him by the 
author. The unusual combination of gifts — physi- 
cal vigor, dashing courage, and literary ability — 
whimsically suggested to the younger man "a union 
of Jim Lane and Addison." Colonel Higginson culti- 
vated friendly relations with his officers but permit- 
ted no undue familiarity, and they never ventured 
upon coarse remarks in his presence. Once he heard 
an officer swearing at one of the men, simply hurling 
oaths at his luckless charge. The Colonel asked 
gently if so much profanity was necessary and re- 
quested the officer to come to his tent. After the 
interview, the offending captain with tears in his eyes 



218 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

swore a big oath that he would never swear again! 
The officers were not allowed to inflict " degrading 
punishments " on the men, or to indulge in "insulting 
epithets"; the word "nigger," for instance, was 
tabooed even in conversation. The soldiers were 
held to strict obedience, but also treated like men. 
The result Captain Jackson says was a miracle, and 
that "the affection and reverence of his soldiers for 
their Colonel were beyond words." Captain Jack- 
son once expressed a wish to transfer to canvas 
a picture of his "stately Colonel" bending with un- 
covered head to listen to the complaints of a ragged 
and ignorant Negress. "No grand lady," he added, 
"could win a more responsive interest or a more 
royal courtesy." 

As for the officers, it was a new experience to be 
associated with a man of refinement and culture and 
they received with delight the books and magazines 
which he sent to their tents. The Colonel wrote 
home : — 

"I wish you could see how pretty our encamp- 
ment looks, with its 250 tents glimmering white in 
the moonlight. . . . The white curlews hover and wail 
all night invisibly around us in the air, like vexed 
ghosts of departed slave-lords of the soil. . . . This 
was considered an especially severe plantation and 
there is a tree which was used as a whipping post, so 
that the marks of the lashes are still to be seen. . . . 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 219 

"As I sit in my tent door and adjudicate contested 
cases where the lingo is almost inexplicable, and the 
dusky faces grow radiant and sometimes majestic 
with eager expression, I seem like Rajah Brooke in 
Borneo; or like Whittier's lost Southern play- 
mate: 

1 The dusky children of the sun 
Before me come and go.' . . . 

"Who should drive out to see me to-day but Har- 
riet Tubman [the escaped slave, who rescued many 
of her race and conducted them to freedom] who is 
living in Beaufort as a sort of nurse and general care 
taker. . . . All sorts of unexpected people turn up 
here. . . . 

"My regiment has now 630 and they come in 
tolerably fast. They are easy to discipline and drill, 
and do as well as any regiment of equal date, — as 
well as the 51st. I enjoy it all very much and have 
never for a moment regretted my promotion : though, 
without my two months in that regiment, it would 
have been almost impossible.' * 

In his War Journal, Colonel Higginson noted: — 

"Just now a soldier was here, defending himself 
against a Captain's complaint and said indignantly, 
1 1 ain't got colored-man principles, I 's got white- 
gentleman principles.' ... I am not sure if it was one 
of our men who when asked insultingly, ' What are 
you, anyhow?' answered 'When God made me, I 
was n't much, but I 's a man now.' . . . Their buoy- 
ant spirits are proof against everything. . . . Their 
little sorrows are usually like those of children — 



220 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

once make them laugh, and the cloud is dispelled. 
— Meanwhile on board the transports with white 
troops, there is generally grumbling and dissatisfac- 
tion. — Every captain of a transport who has once 
taken my regiment wishes to take it again in prefer- 
ence to whites. . . . 

"The very listening to these people is like adjust- 
ing the ear to some foreign tongue. Imagine one of 
the camp washerwomen saying dramatically to-day, 
'I took she when she am dat high, and now if him 
wants to leave we, let he go'; the person thus 
chaotically portrayed being a little adopted girl who 
had deserted her." 

In January, the Colonel reports that he has pre- 
sented a sheep to a fellow-officer's wife, and says: — 

"You don't know how pastoral I feel, when I con- 
template my little flock of sheep straying round to 
find something to nibble; as soon as they succeed 
they will grow fat and we shall nibble them. They 
are pro-slavery sheep, as Kansas used to say." 

It was necessary to exercise some ingenuity in 
order to keep up military guise, for Colonel Higgin- 
son wrote to his wife : — 

"When any occasion requires the Doctor to be 
magnificent, I am to whip off my shoulderstraps and 
put on his. So we shall both have a dress coat. No 
longer will the sentinels in Beaufort shoulder arms 
remotely to my buttons (salute for a captain) and 
then hastily present arms when my colonel's straps 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 221 

come within ken. I feel like Hosea Biglow's militia 
officer, who had brass enough outside 'let alone 
what nature had sot in his featers, to make a 
6-pounder out on.' " 

As to the difficulty of getting money to pay his 
men, Colonel Higginson wrote home : — 

11 Camp Saxton, Jan. 19, 1863. 

" About money ... I don't know when I can get 
any and there is nothing to be done. ... If Uncle 
Sam keeps afloat, I shall have enough for everything, 
though it seems rather mean to be drawing pay for 
such pleasant things as power, philanthropy, drill- 
ing, outdoor life, and unlimited horseback. . . . The 
one [horse] which Gen. Saxton ' turned over ' to me, 
has sowed his wild oats and become sensible and 
I ride him at battalion drill." 

On January 21, General Hunter made this regi- 
ment a visit, promising pay, muskets, and blue 
trousers, also authorizing the regiment to go on an 
expedition along the coast to pick up cotton, lumber, 
and above all recruits. A similar expedition had 
been declined by the Colonel shortly after his ar- 
rival, on account of lack of drill and discipline among 
both men and officers. In his journal he wrote: — 

"Jan. 21, 1863, Camp Saxton. . . . Our danger in 
such expeditions is not nearly so great as one would 
think, as we have cannon and the rebels have not, 
and they would run away from them. But I think 



222 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

they would run away from our men, even without 
the cannon — I should think they would — I 
should. They are perfectly formidable." 

The first expedition led the happy Colonel with 
his dusky troop up the St. Mary's River, which 
divides Florida from Georgia. He reported to his 
wife early in 1863: — 

"We are five days out on a rambling expedition, 
I with 3 steamers and 400 men, having a very pleas- 
ant semi-piratical time. We have had one mid- 
night fight in a wood, with a cavalry company, 1 
killed, 7 wounded of ours, mostly near me, but I had 
not a scratch. The men are splendidly courageous. . . . 

"We have iron, lumber, rice, recruits, 67 prisoners, 
a cannon and a flag." 

Three days later he wrote to his mother: — 

"We have made one of the most daring expedi- 
tions of the war, forty miles up the St. Mary's river, 
fought a cavalry company in open field, and defeated 
it overwhelmingly, and many other things which 
you will see in my Report to Gen. Saxton. The men 
have behaved splendidly and I have enjoyed it in- 
expressibly. When the whole is known, it will estab- 
lish past question the reputation of the regiment." 

To assure his friends, who were anxious about his 
exposing himself in times of danger, Colonel Hig- 
ginson wrote February 23 : — 

"I am kept under a tight rein in that respect al- 
ready; never was a man so teased and badgered as 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 223 

I was on this last trip — I do not need it, because 
though naturally enjoying danger as much as most 
men perhaps, I am not such a fool as not to see the 
value of my life to this regiment/ ' 

And again : — 

" I never shall have a chance to risk myself much. 
... I wore my iron plated vest too, which is very 
light and comfortable." 

Captain Jackson once told the writer of this me- 
moir that his, Colonel was always fearless, riding with 
notebook and pencil in hand amid flying bullets. 
The fact that the officers of colored regiments were, 
to use Colonel Higginson's own words, "fighting 
with ropes around their necks," did not detract from 
the charm of that strange life. The ordinary cour- 
tesies of war had been denied to officers of Negro 
regiments, the Southern Confederacy having issued 
an order to the effect that such officers, if captured, 
should be hanged. 

"Nothing can ever exaggerate the fascination of 
war," wrote the Colonel. "I hardly hear the crack 
of a gun without recalling instantly the sharp shots 
that spilled down from the bluffs at us, along the 
St. Mary's, or hear a sudden trampling of horsemen 
without remembering the moonlight and midnight 
when we were suddenly stopped by hearing it before 
us, at Township Landing. I never can write about 
those wakeful yet dreamlike nights of moonlight, 
it was all too good. ... As for the courage required 



224 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

and all that, it is infinitely exaggerated — to stop 
furious runaway horses, to enter a burning house, 
to plunge in a boiling ocean, requires far more per- 
sonal pluck than to have 'dem dar bullets let loose 
after we ' as my men describe it ; the danger is so in- 
visible, it is not nearly so hard to disregard it; I 
know what I say. Bomb shells are far worse, but 
we have only fired, not received them. 

"It amuses me ... to hear Colonels and Majors 
of freshwater regiments say guardedly 'Your regi- 
ment does much better than I expected ' when they 
know and I know and they know that I know that 
their regiments could n't form square forward on the 
centre even if there were to be an adjutant's wedding 
in the middle." 

For the delights of skirmishes with the enemy 
were varied by a wedding in camp, and of this event 
Colonel Higginson wrote in his journal : — 

"Well, the Adjutant is fairly and thoroughly mar- 
ried. . . . The band of the 8th Maine Regiment ap- 
peared at Dress Parade; the men looked neat and 
soldierly in their blue uniforms (having got rid of the 
wretched red trousers, which they hated) and all 
was well. . . . The Army Regulations do not provide 
for regimental weddings; as Colonel I was first to 
congratulate the bride, but omitted embraces as not 
being specified in the Tactics." 

Of two of his officers, he wrote: — 

" Poor weak fellows, they would have been splen- 
did officers without their wives — [who were] two 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 225 

Irish friends ; one [of them] swore worse than all my 
officers put together and the other never opened her 
lips and was the most formidable tyrant of the two 
— Those two brave men whom I had seen stand to 
their guns in the hottest fire on the St. Mary's were 
like whipped spaniels before those women." 

In March, 1863, Colonel Higginson was sent in 
command of two regiments (1st and 2nd South 
Carolina Volunteers) to Florida, the objects of 
this expedition being to occupy Jacksonville, and 
to carry Lincoln's " proclamation of freedom to the 
enslaved." He wrote to his wife on the 12th that he 
was quartered in a palatial abode, embowered in tea 
roses, and that the town had capitulated ''without 
a gun." Here more or less light skirmishing went on, 
but the Colonel reported that his regiment lived in 
clover and brought in " contrabands," horses, and 
provisions every day. To hold this post with only a 
garrison of nine hundred men, it having been evac- 
uated twice before by Union troops, made the offi- 
cers uneasy, but reinforcements relieved this anxiety. 
Shells were thrown into the town, with the only re- 
sult of disposing of a mosquito net ; and on March 27, 
the Colonel in command noted that danger was 
about over and they were eagerly expecting further 
orders from General Hunter. 

Then came an order for the third evacuation of 



226 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Jacksonville, and Colonel Higginson with his regi- 
ment sorrowfully returned to Beaufort. But in a 
few days relief came in the form of an order to go 
"out on picket at Port Royal Ferry." This new 
field, the devoted son thus described in a letter to 
his mother. 

"Advanced Picquet Station, 
"Port Royal Island, 
"April 8, 1863. 

"We have happened into the most fascinating 
regions and life, riding all day through lanes over- 
arched with roses and woods dense with young 
emerald leaves and looking across blue streams to 
the wooded and sunny mainland of South Carolina. 
A life that is as good as anything we have had, were 
only the zest of immediate danger added!" 

A few days later he wrote: — 

"This charming life among Cherokee roses and 
peach blossoms will last awhile. . . . How funny 
some of the rumors were about the capture of our 
expedition — one Democratic paper writing my 
obituary!" 

Meantime the delay of payment caused more or 
less anxiety, though promises kept up hope. "The 
paymaster writes," recorded the Colonel, "that he 
is really making up our payrolls and we shall prob- 
ably be paid in a week or ten days." 

The infinite pains Colonel Higginson took to keep 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 227 

his men in good training is revealed in such notes as 
these : — 

"White soldiers [are seen] with coats unbuttoned 
and black with them buttoned ; for this is a cardinal 
point with me, you know, and my test of the condi- 
tion of a regiment; if a man begins with swearing 
and stealing, bad practices grow and you always 
find him at last with his coat unbuttoned." 

In "Army Life," Colonel Higginson tells of his 
delight in studying the characteristics of his men and 
of listening to their "spirituals," but occasionally 
in his journal or letters are bits of description not 
heretofore printed. For instance: — 

"One of the men [said] to the Quartermaster who 
had tried long to explain something to him — ' You 
know, Quartermaster, no use for nigger to try to 
comb he wool straight, he always short and kinky 
— He brains short, too, sa.' " 

At Port Royal, Colonel Higginson encountered, in 
the Brigadier-General commanding opposing troops, 
a former Brattleboro acquaintance. He wrote, 
April 19, 1863: — 

"The best thing is that this Brigadier-General 
Walker ... is an old friend ! He is that Lieutenant 
Walker, U.S.A., who was sick at the Water Cure and 
liked me because of my physique and my abolition- 
ism, he being a desperately pro-slavery invalid; who 
afterwards met me in Kansas as Captain Walker, 



228 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

with a cavalry company to arrest Redpath and me, 
and would n't do it for old acquaintance sake — 
and here he is across the river, face to face with me 
again!" 

In July, the absent son wrote of the delight with 
which a box of goodies from the North was re- 
ceived: — 

"lam sitting at my tent door and there is a great 
moon rising : the tents look like the Pyramids against 
it. I have a box from mother with eatables — real 
boarding-school and I give them to the boys." 

And describing the contents of a later box from 
home, he says, "All the pauses of life filled in with 
crackers and new books." 

To his mother's anxious inquiry as to food, he 
wrote : — 

"I do not know why you think we do not live 
well, for we certainly do. . . . We have also napkins. 

"To-day I dined on roast opossum — Done to per- 
fection, done brown with such crackling as Charles 
Lamb in his vision of roast pig only dreamed of. 
I found it a dish of barbaric fascination." 

And he added that the menu was also varied by 
alligator steak. 

Meantime reports of Northern victories in Vir- 
ginia arrived, and were duly exciting to Colonel 
Higginson and his officers. Although the former 
kept ample notes in his journal, he did not attempt 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 229 

much literary work while in camp. He wrote to his 
wife: — 

"Perhaps Hooker's victories will give that cheer- 
fulness to the public mind which J. T. Fields thinks 
favorable to book publishing; and thus do great 
events link on to small ones and affect literary 
Colonels." 

It was a great satisfaction to Colonel Higginson, 
as time went on, to know that the peculiar respon- 
sibility which he had felt as commander of the first 
regiment of freedmen was diminishing, owing to 
the rapid multiplication of Negro regiments. 

"Any disaster/' he wrote to his mother on May 18, 
1863, "or failure on our part would now do little 
harm. . . . There is no doubt that for many months 
the fate of the whole movement for colored soldiers 
rested on the behavior of this one regiment. A mu- 
tiny, an extensive desertion, an act of severe disci- 
pline, a Bull Run panic, a simple defeat, might have 
blasted the whole movement for arming the blacks. 

"... Col. Littlefield (30 regiment S.C.V. in fu- 
ture) says that Secretary Chase told him the Cabinet 
at Washington kept their whole action in regard 
to enlisting colored troops waiting to hear from us 
in Florida, and when the capture of Jacksonville 
was known, the whole question was regarded as 
settled, the policy avowed, and Adjutant General 
Thomas sent out on his mission. This is, I think, 
the best expression of the importance of our action 
that has yet occurred. 



230 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

11 The other is the saying of one of our men who was 
asked if he belonged to Col. Montgomery's regiment. 
'No,' said he proudly, 'I'se belong to Colonel Hig- 
ginson's regulars.' This is the triumph of self- 
respect, with a witness! . . . 

"This war seems to me glorious, however slow, 
when I think of these freedmen and women here. 
These are days of the Lord, each a thousand years." 

It was while at Port Royal doing picket duty that 
Colonel Higginson passed a rash night in the water 
which he described in an " Atlantic" paper and 
afterwards included in "Army Life." In July, the 
regiment made another expedition up the South 
Edisto River, being gone thirty-six hours. After the 
capture of Port Royal, the plantations along the 
coast were abandoned and the slaves withdrawn 
into the interior. In order to reach the black popu- 
lation, it was necessary to navigate shallow, wind- 
ing, and muddy rivers for miles. This proved a 
disastrous adventure for the Colonel. He wrote to 

his mother from Beaufort : — 

"July 12, 1863. 

"Only time to say that we have had another ex- 
pedition up the South Edisto River ... 30 miles and 
brought away 200 contrabands — such a scene — 
1 like notin' but de Judgment Day' they said. I had 
a knock on the side, not breaking the skin, I don't 
know from what, which still lames me somewhat 
but it does n't amount to the dignity of a wound, 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 231 

though the papers may spread it. I submit to be 
quiet for a few days and be taken care of, but I am 
in camp and have a nice time. You need not fear 
any bad result." 

The curious wound of which the disabled Colonel 
made light, proved in the end to have jarred his 
whole system, making the victim a semi-invalid for 
several years. The surgeons agreed that his life 
would probably have been sacrificed, had he not al- 
ways been a total abstainer from whiskey. He wrote 
to his mother: — 

"We are now satisfied that nothing touched me, 
but the shell passed within about six inches of my 
side just above the hip, making by the concussion a 
black and blue spot as big as my two hands. . . . 

"Of all the humbugs of war, commend me to being 
'wounded.' . . . No pain, no dressings or doses, a 
pleasant languor, nothing to do and no wish to do 
anything, a beautifully kept house and nobody but 
Dr. R. and myself in it, the hostess herself absent 
... to lie all day on a breezy balcony with green 
leaves and floating clouds, — why it is Arcadia, 
Syrian peace, immortal leisure. I blush to have 
bought it so cheaply as by a mere black and blue 
spot on the side, to show where a bombshell did not 
touch me." 

Not recovering from his injury, Colonel Higgin- 
son procured a month's furlough and went North to 
recuperate. When he had been at home a week or 



232 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

two, he assured his surgeon that although he was in 
a haven of peace he wanted to be with the regiment 
and sometimes felt quite homesick for black faces. 
This eagerness to return to active duty led the im- 
patient Colonel to go back to' the regiment too 
soon, and finding on his return an accumulation of 
work, and a visible loosening of discipline, he exerted 
himself beyond his strength. He wrote to Dr. 
Rogers who had been obliged to resign on account 
of ill health: — 

"Headquarters, ist S.C.V. 
"Aug. 22, 1863. 

" My dear Doctor: 

"You may thank your stars if you have any 
love for this regiment that I did come back before 
I felt fit to do it — for if ever a family of grown up 
babies needed a papa, this was the one. To be sure 
if I had come back here sick I should probably have 
died in a day — for anything so forlorn, dismal, 
despairing as these dozen officers who were not on 
the sick list, you can scarcely imagine. Such lachry- 
mose bugbears of diseases, discords, delinquencies, 
Captains under arrest, officers suspected of cheating 
their companies, companies of mutiny. . . . Lt. Col. 
Strong sick in hospital and going North, Major 
Trowbridge ditto. . . . The first Brigade review of 
the regiment to come off that afternoon — and no 
field officer! The Adjutant yellow as gold, and no 
Quartermaster! In the midst of which gloomy gal- 
lery, in popped I ! 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 233 

" You are the only person in the Universe who can 
conceive the picture. 

"Now you are to observe that by some extra- 
wonderful stroke of my accustomed good luck, I 
come on shore from a comfortless voyage perfectly 
buoyant and hilarious — feeling better than for 6 
months back and so invincibly cheerful that every- 
body began to melt before it — from that hour the 
Lt. Col. and Major began to mend (though still 
mere wrecks of themselves) all the wheels began to 
turn, all cards turned out aces and at this moment 
I don't see one real worry except that, no doubt, some 
of the officers are sick. Never was there a greater 
triumph of sheer health and an unalterable habit of 
looking on the bright side." 

Although the Colonel was himself abstaining from 
action at this time, his men made occasional sallies 
into the enemy's territory. On one of these raids a 
colored sergeant, Henry Williams, engineered the 
escape of all the slaves from a plantation, and the 
adventure is thus described in a letter to Mrs. 
Higginson : — 

"Camp Shaw, Nov. 26. 

"We have had quite an excitement in a fight of 
some of our men on the main land where they brought 
away 27 colored people and 2 rebel pickets and beat 
off a cavalry company headed by five blood hounds, 
all of whom were killed. We have the body of one 
which James Rogers has skinned and taken to N.Y. 
to be stuffed and shown. Two of my men were 



234 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

drowned and six wounded — One edifying result is 
that there was a flag of truce a few days after and 
the rebel officers readily held official communication 
with our officers which last summer they would n't 
do. 

"One amusing thing was, just before the fight 
began, the pickets across the river farther down were 
taunting our pickets — 'Why don't you come over,' 
to which our men answered — ' Coming soon enough 
for you ' and even as they spoke the fire up river be- 
gan and the rebels forthwith mounted their horses 
and went off in a hurry!" 

Health and strength did not return to the wounded 
Colonel, and after getting affairs straightened out 
there came a collapse. Perfect inaction was enjoined, 
but with his usual hopefulness the invalid wrote to 
his wife, ' c With milk and eggs and soup and Scotch 
ale I think I shall soon come round. . . . No new 
symptoms develop, only the same 'General 
Debility.'" 

Colonel Higginson then adopted the resource of 
spending his nights at a neighboring plantation, re- 
turning to camp by day. He reported to his wife 
that the doctor said he had been "thrust through 
and through by malaria without knowing anything 
about it, because of temperament." 

There were still hard days to live through, official 
inspections, brigade reviews, and court-martials. 




HENRY WILLIAMS, 
FIRST SERGEANT, 1ST SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEERS 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 235 

Four regiments took part in the brigade drills and 
the Colonel of the 1st South Carolina wrote: — 

"I think mine does best, but perhaps each little 
Col. thinks the same. . . . 

"I am sitting in Court Martial waiting for the 
court; this is the 3rd day we have tried to meet in- 
effectually — we are to try several men for their 
lives who have tried to desert to the enemy and 
[we] ought to get at work. Several of the conscripts 
have tried to bribe negroes to take them to the 
other side, and have actually started." 

Meantime, Mrs. Higginson had decided to remove 
to Newport, Rhode Island, for her health. Her 
husband wrote from Camp Shaw, November, 
1863: — 

" 1 can now see you at Newport, cat and two kit- 
tens. ... I agree with you that at the end of my 
military pilgrimage, we might try Cambridge — 
indeed as people grow older they gravitate toward 
their birthplace." 

As Christmas Day approached, the Colonel wrote 
to his mother that the colored^people were planning 
a great fair in Beaufort " which enlisted all hands"; 
and that on New Year's Day there was to be a 
barbecue and dance in the evening at the principal 
restaurant. He added : — 

"This saloon was to have been called Higginson 
Hall but the painter objected telling the proprietors 



236 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

that the other Colonels might take offence, so that 
immortal honor was lost. Instead, the proprietor 
is one of six (all black) who have made up $60 to 
buy a sword to be presented me on New Year's 
Day." 

December 28, he wrote: — 

"We are busy with preparations for New Year's 
Day. My sword has come, but I have not seen it — 
it was selected by Frank Shaw and cost $75. This 
with my captured one and the one given at Worces- 
ter will be a memorial, when the war is over, of my 
share in it." 

After the presentation of this sword he reported : — 

"Jan. 8, 1864. 

"Did I tell you that after the New Year's Festi- 
vals, the little Tribune correspondent came to me 
for my * wemarks' (he is English, 3 feet high; and a 
goosey) and the inscription on my sword. I could 
not give him the former but the latter was easily 
made visible. It ran thus 

' Tiffany & Co. 
1 New York.'" 

These three swords entwined with a faded sash are 
still where Colonel Higginson hung them in the 
Cambridge house. 

The trouble about securing the soldiers' back pay 
continued, and the anxious Colonel was kept busy 
writing to various people in Washington and stating 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 237 

the case in Northern newspapers. He said to his 
former surgeon, " I suffer much from anxiety about 
the arrears of pay, especially since Fessenden's un- 
expected opposition." At length the men were paid 
in part, but the majority preferred to have nothing 
if they could not have all. Some of the remarks made 
by the indignant soldiers are quoted in the War 
Journal: "'We's willing to serve for notin', but the 
Guvment ought not for insult we too, by offering 
seven dollars' [instead of thirteen]. Several said, 
1 It's the principle we look at.' Another said, ' If we 
take it, it's because our chilen need it, but it takes 
de sojer all out of we, to be treated so unjustly.' " 

Through the remaining months of service, im- 
paired health was a constant drawback. Camp life 
was brightened at this time by the arrival of the 
Quartermaster's baby, and later Colonel Higginson 
wrote a paper called "The Baby of the Regiment" 
which was printed in "Our Young Folks," after- 
wards in "Army Life," and included in Whittier's 
" Child Life in Prose." The author wrote to his wife 
in February, 1864: — 

"Our ladies are quite alarmed at a Department 
order inquiring as to the number of officers' wives in 
the regiment — it is feared they are to be sent North, 
which heaven forbid. If you could see our evening 
parlor you would think it very pleasant — the 



238 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

brightest fire and walls decked with holly and vines. 
They play whist a good deal, but the baby eats up 
the cards so fast, it is hard to keep a pack full. 
Pretty little thing — she lies in the hammock on the 
piazza with her little scarlet hood and cloak and lit- 
tle fat arms coming out through the meshes. . . . 
A little hen roosts there at night. . . . The baby 
cements everybody and goes from one pair of arms 
to another all day; she is a darling." 

A proposition that Colonel Higginson should 
write Senator Sumner and present his claims to be 
appointed Brigadier-General in command of colored 
troops — this appeal to be fortified by an urgent 
letter from General Saxton, himself, — was thus 
noted in the War Journal : — 

"I told him [General Saxton] with some indigna- 
tion that if I could be made a Major General by 
writing a note ten words long to a Congressman I 
certainly would not do it ; that I never yet had asked 
for any position in life and never expected to; that 
a large part of the pleasure I had had in command- 
ing my regiment grew out of the perfect unexpected- 
ness of the promotion. . . . Emerson says no man can 
do anything well who does not feel that what he is 
doing is for the time the centre of the universe — I 
thank heaven that I never yet have supposed for a 
moment that any brigade or division in the army was 
so important a trust as my one regiment — at least 
until the problem of Negro soldiers was conclusively 
solved before all men's eyes." 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 239 

In February the regiment was ordered to Florida, 
and all was excited anticipation. The Colonel wrote 
home : — 

"The expedition is a very powerful one — where I 
went with 1000 men Gen. Seymour goes with 10,000 
including 3 brigades of infantry, eight batteries and 
2 mounted regiments. It is not therefore expected 
that it will take much fighting to repossess Florida, 
though there may be some marching. Nobody knows 
what the plans are." 

A few days later, he added: — 

"The steamer is come at last and we go on board 
the Delaware to-morrow morning. So that matter 
is settled. The officers and men were all very desir- 
ous to go and I should have been sorry had we not 
done so." 

To Dr. Rogers, Colonel Higginson wrote an ac- 
count of this plan and its outcome : — 

"Headquarters, ist S.C.V., Camp Shaw, 
"Beaufort, S.C., Feb. 20, /64. 

"Such a time as we have had this last fortnight. 
Sent out on picquet Monday — sitting in great hilar- 
ity on Wednesday eve, with a blazing fire, and sud- 
denly summoned back by telegraph that we might 
be ready to move at a moment's notice — then mov- 
ing in next day, full of hopes of Florida — hopes 
checked by Gen. S.'s remonstrance — then a defi- 
nite order to go when the 4th N.H. came and to 



2 4 o THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

report to Gen. Seymour at Jacksonville — then ar- 
rived the 4th N.H. but no transportation for us — 
then came the 'Delaware* and we were ordered on 
board — then Gen. S. played his last card in 13 
cases of Small Pox and failed. Up early in the morn- 
ing (you can judge how early our men might be — ), 
everybody in the highest spirits, taking all our 
earthly goods in vast wagons and bequeathing all 
lumber to the 4th N.H. or to the men's wives — 
working furiously on the wharf till noon and then 
just as the last board but one was disappearing into 
the capacious jaws of the 'Delaware' — down rode 
Gen. S. with an order countermanding our going be- 
cause of small pox ! 

"Such a set of forlorn creatures as I marched back 
to camp that day were never yet seen — they were 
all so doleful, I rose at last into the highest spirits 
. . . and now after four cold days, the Camp is in 
some degree itself again — But there was not one 
who did not feel the disappointment most keenly, 
even I who was unfit to go. The S.C. men felt al- 
most as bad as the Florida. Serg't Mclntyre sat cry- 
ing like a child, handkerchief to eyes, several hours 
after our return. 

"At first we expected to go when the Small pox 
had diminished . . . but it is now evident that not 
much more is to be done in Florida. ... It was a 
great delight to Gen. S. to keep us, as you may 
imagine, and the men with their wonderful elasti- 
city seem to have got over it. One thing pleased me, 
though they knew for a week they were to leave the 
post forever, there was not a single desertion. . . . 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 241 

But the excitement and work of our abortive de- 
parture set me back enough to show how poorly I 
am fitted, at present, for a campaign." 

The Colonel wrote to a Worcester friend, "Do you 
know how near we came to being in that infinitely 
disastrous and useless defeat of Seymour's in Florida? 
... As senior colored regiment, we should have had 
a prominent place in the fight and suffered as badly 
as any." He mourned that they had missed "both 
glory and danger," and added: — 

"The night the first load of wounded came in 
[from the Battle of Olustee] we were having a ball 
for Washington's birthday — really a fine affair and 
the description in Childe Harold is not finer than the 
chill and hush which came over all as in the middle 
of the Lancers, General Saxton came in, pale and 
stern, and with a word stopped every foot and every 
chord — and said that it was wicked to be dancing 
amidst such suffering and disaster — Lt. Col. Reed, 
actually dying, had just been carried past the house. 
There had been a shadow over us all the evening 
from the mere rumors." 

The regiment was now, in the spring of 1864, on 
"advanced picket" duty, and Colonel Higginson 
described the life in his letters home : — 

"Our life here seems like a pleasant country seat 
with everything very free and easy. Part of the 
household are just setting off for a little church in 



242 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 

the woods about 4 miles off — some on horseback — 
others in a four wheeled farm wagon called by the 
people on the plantation reverentially ' the buggy ' — 
shutters are taken down and laid across for seats, 
then restored to their legitimate office on returning. 
Harness chiefly rope of various dates. 

" ... A great dilapidated parlor with hardly a 
whole pane ; and a vast blazing fireplace o' evenings, 
with arms and accoutrements hung all about, and 
people reading, working or playing perennial Euchre, 
with which Dr. Rogers, bless him, demoralized the 
regiment forever. 

"By day or night there are interminable rides 
through woodpaths over the whole island to the dif- 
ferent picquet stations . . . your favorite yellow 
jasmine high and nodding and fragrant and abun- 
dant everywhere." 

One day Colonel Higginson mentioned in his jour- 
nal that a few mysterious guns had been fired by the 
Confederate picket. 

" Next day there was a Flag of Truce and a courte- 
ous young Captain from the other side was asked 
for information, as it is usually the understanding 
that the picquets will not fire or be fired on. He 
only answered, smiling, 'You gentlemen are training 
your Buckinghams (which, it seems, is now their 
cant phrase for colored soldiers) to shell us from the 
gunboats, and this little bombardment was our only 
way to retaliate.'" 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 243 

The following letter, written in March, reminds 
one of scenes described by Hawthorne : — 

"Camp Shaw, Beaufort. 

" I saw in town a sight singular and painful — In 
front of the Provost Marshal's office in the busiest 
part of the main street of the town, stood upon a box 
a well dressed man, large and commanding in ap- 
pearance, and with gaping gazers all around. He was 
sentenced by Court Martial to stand there two hours 
daily for a week, with the inscription on his breast 
1 1 sold liquor to soldiers' and with a 24 lb. ball and 
chain attached to his leg; after which he was to be 
fined $500 or be imprisoned 6 months, and then sent 
from the Department forever. But Gen. Saxton in 
pity for his wife, who is here, took off the inscription 
and the ball and chain and let the rest take its course. 
I felt it the more from the fact that I was on the 
Military commission which tried him, though I hap- 
pened to be unable to attend the trial. Popular in- 
dignation sustains the verdict, partly because of the 
enormous price at which the man sold the surrepti- 
tious whiskey ($12 per gallon) and partly because he 
came down here as a preacher and like most of that 
class, exhorted and cheated on alternate days; it is 
most remarkable how badly all the clerical envoys 
have turned out. I literally have not known an ex- 
ception ; the only preacher who is respected "here is 
a young lawyer from N.Y. the acting Post Chaplain 
who can only be ' acting ' because he has never been 
ordained. . . - 

" The man excited my sympathy and showed some 



244 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

character by the way which he took to shun the ig- 
nominy of this standing pillory. He stood bending 
over a little blank book or diary in which he was 
writing busily all the time. He looked as far re- 
moved from the world as St. Symon Stylites on his 
pillar. Indeed there was something inconceivably 
remote and foreign in the whole scene — the man 
wore a broad brimmed hat, long straight overcoat 
and high riding boots and seemed to have stepped 
out of Puritan days." 

Picket duty, which Colonel Higginson regarded as 
a sort of vacation, was interrupted one April morn- 
ing, by an order to relieve a departing colored regi- 
ment. He wrote: — 

"The men, always ready for change, enjoyed the 
suddenness of the order and the march out was as 
jolly as usual . . . my chief fun came this time from 
the Drum corps among whom there is wit and frolic 
and deviltry enough to set up a legion of Topsies. . . . 

"The 9th is a very fine looking regiment and the 
officers appear well. The men have different songs 
and ways from our men, and their type of religious 
enthusiasm seems different. Our men are chiefly 
Baptists and those Methodists; the former is cer- 
tainly better for the body, as involving at least one 
complete ablution in each life. The 9th U.S. men 
are farther divided into two subdivisions, in this re- 
gard — the Holy Jumpers and the Holy Rollers. 
The difference between them is that when under con- 
viction, the Holy Jumpers jump and the Holy Roll- 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 245 

ers roll: a division decidedly more palpable than 
most sectarian barriers." 

In the journal, at about this time, there appears 
this abstract from acting chaplain Private Thomas 
Long's sermon: — 

"We can remember, when we fust enlisted, it was 
hardly safe for we to pass by de camps to Beaufort 
and back, lest [unless] we went in a mob and carried 
our side arms. But we whipped down all dat — Not 
by going into de white camps for whip um; we 
did n't tote our bayonets for whip um; but we lived 
it down by our naturally manhood; and now de 
white sojers take us by de hand and say Broder 
Sojer. Dat 's what dis regiment did for de Epiopian 
[Ethiopian] race. 

" If we had n't become sojers, all might have gone 
back as it was before; our freedom might have 
slipped through de two houses of Congress and 
President Linkum's four years might have passed by 
and notin' been done for we. But now tings can 
neber go back, because we have showed our energy 
and our courage and our naturally manhood. 

" Anoder ting is, suppose you had kept your free- 
dom widout enlisting in dis army; your chilen 
might have grown up free and been well cultivated 
so as to be equal to any business, but it would 
have been always flung in dere faces — ' Your fader 
never fought for he own freedom ' — and what could 
dey answer? Neber can say that to dis African race 
any more. ..." 



246 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"He also said ' Notin makes you more trouble 
dan dat red flag you keep wagging out of your mouf ' 
[the tongue]." 

Colonel Higginson's enjoyment of the racy qual- 
ities of his men never failed, and he hoped that they 
would not become so civilized as to lose their piquant 
use of the personal pronoun. As an example, he 
gives an imaginary General Order improvised by one 
of the men : — 

" Headquarters No. I. General Order No. 162; 
Heretofore no man must fry he meat, must always 
boil he." 

Perpetual pleasure was also found by the Colonel 
in the Negro songs. 

"When I am tired and jaded in the evening," he 
wrote, "nothing refreshes me more immediately 
than to go and hear the men singing in the company 
streets. There is such a world of trustful peace in 
it, I feel as if they were a lot of babies in their cradles 
cooing themselves to sleep, the dear, blundering, 
dusky darlings!" 

And he illustrates by the following anecdote their 
curious mingling of military and scholastic train- 
ing:— 

"Dear old Uncle York leans in the doorway of 
Dr. Minot's tent, with his broad brimmed hat on, 
like a retired Seraph in easy circumstances. Along 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 247 

comes little Ben, Mrs. Dewhurst's page, 2 \ feet 
high, and swaggeringly says, 'Uncle York, gwine to 
school?' and the blessed veteran gets down his 
primer, dog-eared now as far as four syllables and 
away they go to the moss house where Mrs. D. holds 
sway over drummers and divines. . . . 

"Pete says Uncle York told them that he once 
walked from a certain point to Darien, twenty miles 
' discoursing ' all the way to himself and that he had 
finally to stop outside of Darien 'to end de dis- 
course' — In this and many other points he con- 
stantly reminds me of Socrates, only that Socrates, 
as it would appear, never did end. . . . 

"Pete, the Major's boy-servant, who had picked 
up Gallop dances from native Africans, leads the 
boys in 'shouts' and decorates the school tent very 
prettily on his own plan. He is rather hard to wake 
in the morning and when the Major's boot is thrown 
at him with or without the owner's foot, he pleads 
apologetically that it is bad luck to wake de f us time 
you are called. 'Sometimes ghosts do call um,' he 
adds in explanation, which implies the necessity of 
a wholesome caution." 

Colonel Higginson compared Uncle York to the 
hero of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." His son, named John 
Brown, had been killed in the first armed encounter 
between the Negroes and their former masters, and 
Uncle York always firmly believed that the cele- 
brated John Brown song related to his son. Another 
anecdote in the diary about the same old Uncle, who 



248 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

became Colonel Higginson's servant when discharged 
from the regiment for old age, ran thus: — 

11 Uncle York was telling, the other day, about a 
master with whom he had deposited his odd earnings 
and who died without refunding them, so that they 
were lost altogether. Uncle York finally officiated 
in driving to the grave, and as the vehicle jolted over 
the roots in the woods he says, ' I did n't care how 
much I jolt he — I pure tink of my money all de time.' 
This use of the word pure is genuine old English." 

Meantime the chaplain of the regiment, who had 
been in the habit of varying his spiritual duties by 
daring forays into the enemy's country, was cap- 
tured. The Colonel wrote, March 26, 1864: — 

" We have just heard from our dear old Chaplain, 
Feb. 12, at Columbia Jail, as cheerily as usual — he 
says ' I find this a good place for study and have con- 
cluded to stay two years. I am doing excellent well 
and am satisfied.' Think of that for a prisoner!" 

In April, Colonel Higginson felt that he must leave 
the army. The bursting shell which caused his 
wound had shattered his digestion. He was obliged 
to live on rice and hominy and confided to his mo- 
ther, " I feel very weak in these days." General 
Saxton was unwilling to consider his resignation and 
wished to substitute a six months' furlough. But the 
disabled officer was unconvinced, and wrote home: — 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 249 

11 My surgeon's certificate is sent in to the Surgical 
Board in Beaufort, who have to approve it, and as it 
contains the word Toxicohaemia, it certainly ought 
to pull me or any one through. ... I expect to 
leave in about 10 days ... I feel that I have 
done my work here and am perfectly willing to close 
it up. . . . 

" Sometimes I think the greater activity in the 
book- world makes me feel more as if I had been here 
long enough — you know when I first came away 
there was a great stagnation there, and now it seems 
as if all the wheels were busy again and I must not 
stay too long away. . . . 

"People whom I left young come down here old 
men ; last night Carter brought into my tent a hand- 
some man with hair and beard almost silver, and it 
was Underwood formerly of the Atlantic whom I left 
a handsome brown-haired youth not long ago.'' 

To his mother, he reported, May 9, 1864: — 

"All goes well enough in the regiment and I have 
got all the special jobs done about which I was 
anxious and have now nothing particular to do and 
am leading a sort of posthumous life in my military 
relations, though still in command. I have thor- 
oughly made up my mind to resign, but it takes some 
three months to get one's Ordnance accounts set- 
tled and that must be done first. It seems very won- 
derful to be recommencing life again and I alter- 
nately feel very old and very young when I think of 
it, usually the latter. ... I think I shall feel my 
conscience entirely clear as to my share in the great 



250 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

drama, and quite willing to renounce farther partici- 
pation." 

The following note, received after Colonel Higgin- 
son's return to the North, is without date and came 
from the Office of the United States Tax Commis- 
sioners, at Beaufort: — 

"Colonel: — 

"We take pleasure in informing you that we have 
given the small village for freedmen, situate just 
Northwest of this town, the name of Higginson, in 
honor of yourself, and the valuable services which 
you have rendered the cause of Constitutional Gov- 
ernment.' ' 

The recipient of this honor derived much amuse- 
ment from the ultimate fate of his namesake ; as the 
town of Higginsonville, some years later, was blown 
away in a hurricane. 

The retired Colonel retained an active interest in 
his regiment, and kept himself informed of all its 
movements. Reporting its departure from Beaufort 
to his old surgeon, Dr. Rogers, he adds: — 

"The men enjoy the way *de shell dey do pop' 
over their heads: and are quite cheerful — though 
the parting was hard as they had no money for their 
families. About this time they are being paid I trust, 
though I have almost abandoned hope — but not 
effort — about their arrears. 

" ... I am mending at the rate of an inch a 
week or so." 



THE BLACK REGIMENT 251 

From Pigeon Cove, he wrote in August : — 

"It is strange to come back from the war; one 
feels like Rip Van Winkle and instinctively grasps 
round to see if all one's friends are still alive; it is 
not that one feels old, but only strange, and as if one 
had been in a trance, during which almost anything 
might have happened.' ' 

It was a relief to Colonel Higginson to receive, in 
October, his order of discharge, having feared that 
he might be retained in some recruiting or other 
minor service. After the regiment was disbanded, 
the Negro soldiers often wrote affectionate letters to 
their former Colonel, and he was able to help them 
in various ways. This extract from one of the men's 
letters gives a fair sample of their loyalty and or- 
thography, "I meet manny of the old Soldiers I 
Spoke of you — all hailed your name with that Emo- 
tion (that become you) of the Sould when hearing of 
one who when in darkness burst light on their part 
way." 

The following winter, the returned author reported 
to Dr. Rogers from Newport that he was writing 
about the St. Mary's expedition: 1 — 

" I never did anything so distasteful to me. It is a 
kind of posthumous life, now that that book of my 
existence is closed. My instinct is always to live in 
the present and it is hard for me to reproduce my 

1 "Up the St. Mary's," Atlantic Monthly, April, 1865. 



252 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

own Past. I do it mainly from a sense of duty and 
because, until it is done, the way will not seem clear 
for other things. . . . 

"I am just opening fire on Congress again about 
the pay. Wilson presented my petition in the Senate 
and Boutwell was to do so to-day in the House. I 
have written a letter to the 'Tribune, 1 which is 
strangely delay ed." 

This weary and humiliating struggle for justice 
finally succeeded, and the promised payment to his 
soldiers was made in full. 

Forty years after this wonderful experience as 
leader of the first regiment of freed slaves, its offi- 
cers met in Boston. Their old commander was unable 
to be present at this reunion, and a memorial signed 
by his former associates and containing these words 
was sent to him : — 

" In those brave days you were not alone our com- 
mander ; you were our standard also of what is noble 
in character. We were young and untutored; we 
saw in you a model of what, deep in our hearts, we 
aspired to be. Your example was a rebuke to our 
shortcomings, and from your contact our feebler vir- 
tues took healthier tone. Though you parted from 
us your influence remained with us, a constraint from 
what is unworthy, and an incentive to what is high. 
We cannot say that through these many years we 
have been faithful to the standard ; but we may say 
that in its presence it has been easier to be noble and 
harder to be mean." 



XIII 

OLDPORT DAYS 

The removal of his home to Newport, Rhode Island, 
was not altogether acceptable to Colonel Higginson, 
as he disliked leaving his native State. Soon after 
his arrival there he related in a letter to his sisters 
this curious incident : — 

11 Nov. 30, 1864. 

"I have been received very cordially here but 

have encountered one delicious rebuff. Judge 

wished to get off the [School] Committee, and pro- 
posed to another member of the committee that he 
himself should resign and I be appointed in his 
place. Upon this the man flew into a passion, be- 
gan to swear and asked Judge what he meant 

by the proposition. 'Why/ said the Judge, 'he 
would be a very useful man on the Board.' ' Don't 
know anything about that,' said the astute indi- 
vidual, 'but I am not going to sit on the same 
Committee with a black man. 1 " 

However, Newport virtually adopted the stranger, 
making him chairman of the school committee and 
inviting him to give the Fourth of July oration. 
After some hard work the new chairman succeeded in 
abolishing separate colored schools, and in conse- 



254 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

quence was dropped from the committee. Six years 
later his course was justified, for he was reinstated 
upon the school committee, and, moreover, in this 
later service one of his fellow-members was a colored 
man. He also became instrumental in organizing a 
Library Corporation and was one of the directors. 

The beloved mother, with whom Colonel Higgin- 
son had so faithfully kept in touch, died in 1864, 
aged seventy-eight. In an article called "The Fu- 
ture Life," written in 1909 for "Harper's Bazar,' ' 
the loyal son wrote: "Of my own mother, I can say 
that I never saw her beautiful face so calm and so 
full of deferred utterance as when I sat alone beside 
it after death; it was of itself a lesson in immor- 
tality." 

A less frequent chronicle of daily events was hence- 
forth sent to his sisters ; for instance : — 

"I read a chapter in l Alice in the Looking Glass' 
after breakfast to the boarders to begin the day well. 
It is very rich. . . . 

"Spring opens and business drives. We have 
alder blossoms and snowdrops and six manuscript 
stories from 3 different young ladies with affection- 
ate requests to read and criticize. . . . 

"Mothers now heap their babies on me more 
than ever, but I can stand it if they can. ... I 
have a new admirer, partially insane, like most of 
mine." 



OLDPORT DAYS 255 

The Higginsons made their home in a boarding- 
house kept by a gentle Quaker lady, and of their 
hostess Colonel Higginson wrote : — 

"Dear Mrs. Dame is as lovely as ever, and when 
she has young kittens to drown, warms the water to 
save their feelings." 

And of the Newport Quakers in general : — 

"They seem like a kind of mild and virtuous ma- 
chines from oldest to youngest, without passions or 
imaginations. Their stormiest impulses seem but 
mild predilections, extending at certain times toward 
the tea table, or a shade more forcibly towards 
dinner, or among those most emancipated towards 
a domestic game of croquet." 

In order to give his now helpless wife an airing, 
Colonel Higginson procured a sort of cab and had 
one side removed so that Mrs. Higginson's chair 
could be wheeled directly into the vehicle, and in 
this curious equipage they drove up and down New- 
port's fashionable avenue with characteristic inde- 
pendence. 

How the author spent each hour of the day is re- 
corded in his journal. After his own breakfast, he 
sawed wood for half an hour ; then sat with his wife 
during her breakfast. He then worked from ten 
until two at his desk which was in the room where 
Mrs. Higginson sat all day in her wheeled chair, with 



256 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

an open book before her on a rest. Here she received 
her friends, and her husband's writing was often 
done in the midst of lively conversation. Over his 
desk hung a photograph of the equestrian statue of 
the Venetian Coleone, and from this picture of the 
invincible warrior Colonel Higginson felt that he 
derived strength. The remaining time was given to 
miscellaneous duties and pleasures. 

His old interest in athletics revived, and led him 
to start a gymnasium which he daily frequented, and 
where he led a large class. He joyfully recorded that 
he could do all he ever did " despite lingering traces 
of my army ailment"; and added: — 

" I have felt that perhaps I should gradually recur 
to that blissful mood of life in Nature in which I 
lived at Worcester just before the War. In the army 
I was constantly in the presence of nature, but the 
weight of responsibility submerged it altogether and 
I can now only look back on Nature as the setting or 
frame of my life. . . . Sat by Fort Greene after 
breakfast and thought how much lovelier autumn 
than summer and what a relief when one gets to it. 
It gives a sense of permanent enjoyment — no more 
hurry in the thought that each day is going." 

Newport afforded great opportunities for the old 
recreations, and sailing, rowing, and swimming be- 
came once more daily delights. On a friend's boat 
Colonel Higginson rigged a red Venetian sail "to 



OLDPORT DAYS 257 

light up the harbor,' ' and children were often found 
to shared his excursions. These sometimes took the 
form of fishing for mackerel. On one occasion he 
wrote: — 

"I got 5 children back with no injury or loss be- 
yond a hat, a sack and a pair of india-rubbers. This 
I think was doing well." 

Exercise was his panacea for all ills, and if he felt 
under a cloud "a longish walk" was the remedy. 
After a walk of nine miles, he reported, "On leaving 
I was rather depressed, but came back satisfied with 
everything in the world." To vary these walks riding 
on horseback was again attempted, without much 
success. He wrote in May : — 

" First ride for season. ... I have ridden only 
once or twice since the war — partly from surfeit (at 
first) partly economy, partly some uneasiness about 
my side where I was wounded." 

But he learned to ride the old-fashioned velocipede, 
and found that his work at the gymnasium helped 
him, in body and mind. "It stops off all other 
thoughts for an hour — a day — which walking does 
not, besides the delightful glow in chest and arms." 
For evening amusement there was a chess club, 
and the dramatic talent which was so effective in 
Colonel Higginson's story-telling and conversation 



258 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

was often called into play. He wrote to his sisters, 
February 20, 1866: — 

"I performed Mrs. Jarley and her waxwork show 
with immense eclat and ten people came to tell M. 
about it next day." 

The famous watering-place attracted many celeb- 
rities and a current newspaper reported that nearly 
"the whole 'Atlantic* force" were permanent or 
summer residents of that place. The "Town and 
Country Club," with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe for 
president and Colonel Higginson for vice-president, 
drew together these congenial spirits, and Mrs. 
Howe's home was always an attractive resort. De- 
scribing a visit to this spot, he exclaimed, — "deli- 
cious there in valley! The sight and smell of wild 
•flowers refreshed my soul — they are so rare here." 

To Newport and to Mrs. Dame's table drifted in 
those days sundry bright women, whose sparkling 
conversation and witty repartees made meal-time 
a brilliant occasion. One of these gifted women was 
Helen Hunt, who became an intimate friend of the 
Higginsons. The Colonel was glad to be her literary 
adviser, reading in manuscript all the Saxe Holm 
stories, whose authorship Mrs. Hunt struggled to 
keep a profound secret. After she became Mrs. 
Jackson she wrote to him in 1877, "He [her husband] 



OLDPORT DAYS 259 

knows how much I owe to you — all my success as a 
writer.' ' 

One of the Newport residents whom Colonel Hig- 
ginson especially enjoyed was La Farge, of whom he 
wrote: — 

" I ought not to complain of living in a place which 
has La Farge. . . . He is one of the few men to 
whom it is delightful to talk — almost the only one 
with whom I can imagine talking all night for in- 
stance as that is not my way. He is so original and 
cultivated at the same time, and so free from un- 
worthy things. He seems like a foreigner too — it is 
getting the best part of France to talk with him. 
How unimportant is physical ugliness in a man! If 
I were a woman I should fall in love with him, deli- 
cate and feeble as he is physically." 

Of a farewell dinner given for Wilkie Collins in 
1874, Colonel Higginson wrote: — 

"There were only eight literary men there and I 
remember noticing how much brighter were Mr. 
Whittier's eyes than those of anybody else, though 
he looks old and thin and sick." 

On this occasion he first saw Mark Twain who 
impressed him as " something of a buffoon, though 
with earnestness underneath; and when afterwards 
at his own house in Hartford, I heard him say grace 
at table, it was like asking a blessing over Ethiopian 
minstrels. But he had no wine at his table and that 



260 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

seemed to make the grace a genuine thing." This 
hasty estimate of the popular humorist was a pass- 
ing one, and the acquaintance developed into a cor- 
dial friendship. 

Public men as well as authors and artists were 
drawn to Newport, and when President Hayes vis- 
ited Rhode Island in 1877, the Colonel wrote to his 
sisters : — 

"He looks just like his pictures, and gives a great 
impression of manly equilibrium and quiet strength. 
I was pleased with the quiet way he said to me when 
the people were calling and I told him he would have 
to make a speech : ' No : — there is nothing easier 
than to keep silence.' I shall never forget it; it was a 
key to the whole man. His nieces afterwards told 
me, ' He never brings business to the dinner table ' — 
the * business ' being the government of the nation ! 
. . . On Friday they all came here and I saw Mrs. 
Hayes and liked her quite as much .... She has na- 
ture's good manners, making society manners quite 
superfluous — just such manners as a Republican 
presidentess should have. She clapped her hands like 
a girl when she saw the ocean (for the first time in 
her life) and repined a good deal in being carried off 
to tea in a fine house, saying that she could take tea 
at any time but might never see the ocean again." 

He also records May 30 : — 

"Talked with Admirals Farragut, Porter and 
Capt. Worden. ... He [Farragut] is a good looking 






OLDPORT DAYS 261 

well-knit man — P. less showy with black beard — 
W. coarser looking, with auburn beard and still 
burnt with powder." 

Colonel Higginson had been more or less associ- 
ated in Worcester with Dr. E. E. Hale, who was for 
a time the only clergyman in that city who was will- 
ing to exchange with the pastor of the Free Church. 

"I had such an amusing glimpse/' he wrote, "of 
Edward Hale and his numerous offspring. I was at 
the Redwood library [Newport] and heard the tramp 
of many feet and supposed it an excursion party; 
then his cheery voice. . . . They had stopped on 
their way from Block Island to the Narragansett 
region where they live. I showed them a few things 
and presently they streamed out again, I bidding 
them farewell. Going toward the door I met the 
elder girl returning, and looking for something as if 
she had dropped a glove or a handkerchief. I said, 
'Are you looking for anything?' and she said, smil- 
ing shyly, 'For a pair of twins!' It was even so. 
Hale, counting up his party on the sidewalk, missed 
nothing but a pair of twins and sent her back to find 
them in some corner; which being done, they pro- 
ceeded to the steamboat." 

Various foreign notabilities often found their way 
to Newport. 

"To-day," wrote Colonel Higginson on June 18, 
1876, "I have been to lunch with Dom Pedro of 
Brazil and the Empress at Bancroft's — the most 



262 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

bourgeois and good natured of sovereigns, especially 
the latter, though she is ... a Bourbon. He looks 
like a heavy professor of a country college and she 
like any little stout middle aged lady. . . . 

"It is pleasant to think," he mused, "that summer 
visitors are always a source of pleasure, if not by 
their coming, then by their going." 

In the midst of this pleasant social life Colonel 
Higginson was still sending monthly articles to the 
"Atlantic," besides doing much miscellaneous writ- 
ing. Some of these papers describing Newport life 
were later published in a volume entitled "Oldport 
Days." Meantime he kept himself informed of the 
whereabouts and welfare of the men of his old regi- 
ment, and in June after attending a military funeral, 
he reflected : — 

"How great the charm of military life; it makes 
me almost unhappy to see men form in line and 
think of the happy time when that was the daily oc- 
cupation of my life. . . . 

"How like a dream it all seems. . . . That I was 
in it myself seems the dreamiest thing of all ; I can- 
not put my hand upon it in the least, and if some one 
convinced me, in five minutes some morning, that I 
never was there at all, it seems as if it would all drop 
quietly out of my life, and I should read my own let- 
ters and think they were some one's else. This is one 
thing that makes it hard for me to . . . write any- 
thing about those days, though sooner or later I shall 
do it all. . . . 



i 




THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 1 865 



OLDPORT DAYS 263 

"It seemed like a dream to go to Worcester and 
see how three years had restored my young recruits 
to their old places in shops &c., and swept away all 
traces of those stirring days. Yet the Old Guard of 
those elderly gentlemen were still parading the 
streets, and that made all the real soldiering seem 
more a dream than ever." 

"To keep up my interest in slavery," wrote 
Colonel Higginson to his old army surgeon, — "I am 
translating Epictetus who is far superior to your 
dear Antoninus." Somewhat later another most con- 
genial literary task was accomplished by the retired 
Colonel and he told Dr. Rogers: — 

" I have undertaken a job — to edit the memorial 
volumes containing lives of those Harvard boys who 
have died in the war — it will take me a year almost. 
I write editorially for the Independent too, as well as 
the Commonwealth and Atlantic — so you see I 
have enough on hand. . . . 

" I have been invited to be agent for New England 
of the Freedmen's Union with a salary of $2500." 

This proposal Colonel Higginson was obliged to 
decline. 

Public speaking had been promptly resumed when 
his military life ended, and was never again entirely 
given up. He spoke easily without notes until age 
made memory treacherous, and his enunciation was 
so clear that even when his voice grew weak in later 



264 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

years he could still be easily heard. As a presiding 
officer he was always in demand, having a gift of 
lighting up a dull occasion by ready wit or anecdote, 
of tactfully suppressing long-winded speakers, and 
of gracefully preserving harmony between conflict- 
ing opinions. Invitations to lecture which involved a 
night's absence were usually declined while in New- 
port, on account of his wife's failing health, but this 
rule was sometimes broken ; and on one of these oc- 
casions, he wrote from Washington, D.C. : — 

"Last night my lecture was a real success, they 
say, and I repeat it because I am prone to humility 
about speaking and put all my conceit into my writ- 
ing. It seemed rather an ordeal to speak before Con- 
gressmen and Washington people, they have such 
a surfeit of it; and Gen. Grant had taken a special 
interest in the lecture and made his friends buy 
tickets." 

Again from Ann Arbor, Michigan, he wrote: — 

' ' To-day I have been in some of the classes — one 
most tumultuous class of 350 law students who were 
in ecstasies over a little speech I made — I thought 
they would carry me on their shoulders. Then I had 
to make a little speech to Prof. Tyler's class in Eng- 
lish literature also (35 young men 6 young women) 
to whom he introduced me as the best living writer 
of the English language! Thus much for western 
zeal; but I am very glad to have been here, it is so 
well to get beyond one's accustomed circle/ ' 



OLDPORT DAYS 265 

In the winter of 1867 the lecturer arranged to 
break away from his moorings for a fortnight and 
thus describes some of his experiences : — 

1 ' I have a great renewal of interest in the ' Atlantic/ 
[Monthly] from my trip out West where it preceded 
me everywhere and I have realized what a clientele 
it gave. In two places people came 12 miles to hear 
me, because they had subscribed from the beginning. 
I heard of a little town in northern Iowa (Caspar) 
where there were 50 houses and (before the war) 25 
copies. . . . 

"The remotest places I liked best; it was so 
strange to dip down on these little western towns 
and find an audience all ready and always readers of 
the ' Atlantic ' so glad to see me. One man, an orig- 
inal subscriber to the * Atlantic Monthly/ brought 
his family 20 miles to hear me. This was at Decorah 
near the Minnesota border and 10 miles from a rail- 
way." 

He also met a young farmer who said : — 

"He and his father always looked for my articles 
in the ' Atlantic ' and cut those leaves first — the 
best compliment I ever had. . . . 

" My lecture is on * American Society ' a modifica- 
tion of one on American Aristocracy which I gave at 
Brattleboro before the war. It goes very well and I 
get $100 a night and make about $450 by the trip — 
beside the interest and satisfaction of it, which pays 
for itself." 



266 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

His lectures nearer home often gave him pleasant 
glimpses of the life of old friends. 

"At Amesbury," he wrote to his sisters, "I staid 
with Whittier who . . . seems brighter than I ex- 
pected in his loneliness. . . . He has a singular com- 
panion — a wonderful parrot, 30 years old, an Afri- 
can parrot Quaker colored with a scarlet tail. The 
only sensible and intelligible parrot I ever saw, and 
we had much conversation.' ' 

And when he lectured in Concord he wrote : — 

"I staid at Mr. Emerson's and it was very sweet 
to see him with his grandchildren . . . tending the 
baby of 7 months on his knee and calling him 'a 
little philosopher.' " 

The Sons of Temperance claimed Colonel Higgin- 
son's aid, anti-slavery conventions were still in vogue, 
and he went several times to Washington and Cleve- 
land to preside at Woman Suffrage Conventions. 
Mrs. Higginson's letters to the Brattleboro family 
always contained characteristic comments on her 
husband's doings. 

11 Wentworth has been away two days this week," 
she wrote, "and going to-night to Washington to 
fight for women. I wish they had been fixed before 
we were born. . . . Lately he has been trying to 
find a father and Grandfather for some stray girl — 
I don't know who — but he has n't found them yet, 
but I suppose he will persevere — I should think one 



OLDPORT DAYS 267 

would be enough — but he is naturally thorough you 
know." 

The Colonel explained in a postscript: — 

"The case of this girl is that she wants a pension 
because her father was a soldier and died in the 
rebel prison. ... I have come upon only two ob- 
stacles to her wish : 

" 1st that she is not the man's daughter. 

"2d that he is still alive." 

Occasionally Colonel Higginson attended meetings 
of the Boston Radical Club, a society of advanced 
thinkers which met once a month at the hospitable 
house of Rev. and Mrs. J. T. Sargent. Here an essay 
on some philosophic or theological subject was read 
and discussed, often with great animation. A bomb 
was thrown into the camp one day in the shape of a 
clever anonymous poem, a parody on Poe's " Raven," 
taking off the members of the club. One verse intro- 
duced Higginson thus : — 

"Then a colonel, cold and smiling, 
With a stately air beguiling, 
Who punctuates his paragraphs 
On Newport's shining shore." 

At one of these meetings where Rev. Mr. Weiss re- 
pudiated a "peace-basis" for either earth or heaven, 
Colonel Higginson labelled his theories "The Gos- 
pel of the Shindy." In spite of his own independ- 
ent views, the latter always took the part of the 



268 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"under dog." On one of these occasions he an- 
swered certain caustic strictures on the Bible with 
such earnestness that a listener exclaimed, "How 
rich to hear Higginson standing up for the Orthodox 
ministers!" 

In 1867 he was instrumental in forming the Free 
Religious Association of Boston, and according to 
the records of the society he "has been present at 
more of its councils, has presided over more of its 
festivals, and has delivered more addresses from its 
platform than any other person." He was one of the 
officers of the association from its beginning, serv- 
ing either as president, vice-president, or on the 
board of directors. Of the convention in 1868, he 
wrote in his diary, — "Very successful and Potter 
and I are well repaid for our hard work. Still my in- 
satiate industry of temperament seems to give me 
no time to enjoy." 

He was sometimes asked to state his religious be- 
lief, and among his unpublished manuscripts was 
found this paper entitled "My Creed": — 

"In the life of every thoughtful man, no matter 
how sunny his temperament, there are moments of 
care, sorrow, depression, perplexity when neither 
study nor action nor friends will clear the horizon. 
. . . It is at such times that the thought of an Un- 
seen Power comes to help him ; by no tradition of the 
churches, with no apparatus of mythology; but 



OLDPORT DAYS 269 

simply in the form that the mystics call ' the flight 
of the Alone, to the Alone.' ... It may be in a 
church; it may equally well be in a solitary room or 
on a mountain height. . . . The test of such an ex- 
perience, call it prayer or reverie or what you please 
— is as substantial as anything that can come to us. 
... I am not so sure of what I see with my eyes — 
not so sure that two and two make four — not so 
sure of any of the forms of the logical syllogism as I 
am of the genuineness and value of these occasional 
moments. . . . Far be it from me to claim that any 
such experience is essential to a moral life, or even to 
a self-devoted life ; that would be a mistaken assump- 
tion, and indeed the very fact that one is without 
this source of refreshment and comfort may only 
make his self-abnegation more complete, his virtue 
more heroic, because accompanied with the renun- 
ciation of joy. But I am not one of those who believe 
that life should consist mainly of renunciation and 
self-abnegation, whether of the Roman Catholic or 
of the agnostic type; but that it should attain to 
peace and joy. We can all see that a great deal of 
brave work is done by heroic men in a spirit so grim 
and determined that if it does not fatigue the world 
for which it is applied, it wears out the man who ap- 
plies it; and the experience of personal religion, in 
the old sense, but purified from all the repulsive as- 
sociations of cant and hypocrisy — this surely sup- 
plies the oil that is needed, in order that there may 
be some relief to this terrible friction which wears 
out so many lives. All honor to the great scientific 
investigations which are to so many the only path 



270 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

out of crushing opposition ; but let us recognize also 
that science is not all, and that help and strength 
may still come from a region unexplored by science. 
Grant that its experiences and lights are as yet un- 
systematic, unmeasured, occasional; and that few 
lives can be kept always at their high level, yet it is 
something to know what that level is." 

He was fond of quoting Emerson's saying, "Bet- 
ter that the book should not be quite so good, and 
the bookmaker abler and better and not himself of- 
ten a ludicrous contrast to all that he has written.' ' 

" Perhaps no sentence," he wrote, "ever influ- 
enced my life so much as this since about 1844. It 
has made me willing to vary my life and work for 
personal development, rather than to concentrate it 
and sacrifice myself to a specific result. . . . The 
trouble with me is too great a range of tastes and 
interests. I love to do everything, to study every- 
thing, to contemplate and to write. I never was 
happier than when in the army entirely absorbed in 
active duties ; yet I love literature next — indeed al- 
most better; and I need either two lives or 48 hours 
in the day to do all. How plain that there must be 
other spheres!" 

It was with amused surprise that he read one day 
a proposal of the Springfield "Republican" that he 
should be made president of Harvard University. 
" It is a compliment," he told his sisters, "to be even 
talked about for this position. There is no possibil- 



OLDPORT DAYS 271 

ity of my being appointed. . . . Heard from Ste- 
phen [his brother] that he had urged me for President 
of Harvard College! ... I might add that I am to 
be President of Harvard University because one zeal- 
ous relative is pushing me. But I think I had better 
wait fifty or a hundred years ere announcing so ex- 
treme an impracticability as that." 

At one time he received an invitation to be- 
come chancellor of the State University of Nebraska. 
"Such things gratify me," he said, but "I should 
give up my literary life very un willingly.' ' He was 
also urged to apply for the collectorship of Newport, 
which he declined to do. Some of the attentions 
which he received caused the recipient much amuse- 
ment. For instance, he wrote in 1877: — 

"I had such an odd letter from a New York 
pilot who has just built a fine vessel and wished to 
name it after T. W. Higginson as a Christian, philan- 
thropist and a whole string of epithets which were 
quite intoxicating till they ended with 'and one of 
the most eminent bankers in New England/ This 
not being my strong point I was convinced at last 
that he had jumbled George H. [the father of Henry 
Lee Higginson] and me hopelessly together, so I sent 
the letter to George H. — with the less reluctance 
as he [the pilot] delicately hinted at least that I 
should be expected to provide 'the maiden suit of 
colors ' at $75 in return for the honor." 



272 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

For the summer months the Higginsons were in the 
habit of moving to the " Point," which the Colonel 
once described as the most captivating place he 
ever lived in — "amid birds and elm boughs and 
the lovely walk along the Bay, close by/' Here they 
occupied the house in which the scene of " Malbone" 
was laid, and where the winding secret staircase de- 
scribed in the novel actually existed. 

"We have just removed to new summer quarters," 
he wrote, "namely a very old and stately house by 
the bay, with grand mahogany stairways, several 
rooms panelled to the ceiling and as much carving as 
any Newburyport house. . . . We are wholly apart 
from the fashionable region here, and it seems like a 
fishing hamlet in the suburbs." 

A family of New York children who also sum- 
mered at the "Point" gave great delight to Colonel 
Higginson. He taught them to swim, took them 
sailing, and thus described one of them: — 

" My little Marie's charms are at present in a state 
of chaos, some other child having snipped off her 
hair, and nature having borrowed her two upper 
teeth; but her eyes are like great deep ocean caves, 
with such unconscious lashes!" 

When in the autumn he was obliged to part from 
these little companions he complained, " It is a 
heart-breaking business this setting one's affections 
on other people's children." Yet he tried to comfort 



OLDPORT DAYS 273 

himself by thinking, " It never has been clear to me 
till lately that the great aim of this life is to show 
us what happiness might be — leaving it for other 
spheres to secure it." 

In one of his Decoration Day addresses, when an 
allusion was made to the growing amity between the 
North and the South, Colonel Higginson said, "I 
never can forget that my black soldiers, when deco- 
rating graves for our own army, forty years ago, pro- 
posed for themselves to put flowers also on the graves 
of those who fought bravely on the other side." It 
was after one of these occasions that the poem 
" Decoration Day" was written. This has probably 
been more widely read and copied than any of 
Colonel Higginson's verses, except the poem called 
"The Things I Miss." In a letter to a friend he ex- 
plained the origin of the latter verses : — 

" Did I ever tell you the secret of that bit of con- 
fidence with Heaven? ... I published the verses 
[in 1870] without initials and nobody knew who 
wrote them . . . but they have been twice as*much 
praised by strangers as all I have written beside in 
verse." 

This poem touched many hearts and, after the au- 
thorship was revealed, brought the writer so many 
letters of praise that he once said he thought it would 
be his "best bid for immortality." 



274 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

In reading these verses, it is well to remember 
that, whatever privations were known to Colonel 
Higginson, he had a marvellous faculty of forgetting 
personal troubles: — 

"There is one trait of mine which I almost regret, 
growing out of that elasticity of nature to which I 
owe so much. No matter what depression, anxiety 
or fear I may have had, the moment it is removed all 
trace of it vanishes. There is no ' recoil of bliss ' to 
correspond to the discomfort; the latter simply drops 
off and is forgotten.' ' 

This period seemed to him to be the high tide of his 
intellectual activity, and he wrote: — 

"This feeling of fertility is a happy thing, it en- 
riches all life and enables me to do without many 
things." 

In analyzing his own style, the author noted in his 
journal : — 

"I have fineness and fire, but some want of copi- 
ousness and fertility which may give a tinge of thin- 
ness to what I write. . . . What an abundance, fresh- 
ness and go there is about the Beechers, for instance. 
They are egotistic, crotchety and personally disa- 
greeable, and they often 'make fritters of English* 
but I wish I could, without sacrificing polish, write 
with that exuberant and hearty zeal . . . Shake- 
speare may have written as the birds sing, though I 
doubt it — but minor writers at least have to labor 
ioxjorm as the painter labors — the mere inspiration 



OLDPORT DAYS 275 

of thought is not enough. . . . There must be a 
golden moment but also much labor within that mo- 
ment. At least it is so with me, and I cannot help 
suspecting that it is even so with the Shakespeares. ,, 

On New Year's Day, 1866, the thought first came 
to Colonel Higginson, while reading Hawthorne's 
"Marble Faun," that he might write a romance, a 
project always before rejected. The thought rapidly 
took shape in his mind, too rapidly, he wrote in his 
diary, for his own comfort, being overworked as 
editor of the "Harvard Memorial Biographies.' ' In 
March, he reports himself as still crushed under let- 
ters and memoirs, having himself written thirteen of 
the biographies for these volumes. But on his long 
solitary walks, he dreamed happily about the pro- 
jected story. He wrote in his diary : — 

"A wild afternoon and I imagined a scene for my 
romance so vividly that it now seems real to me. 
. . . Walked to cliffs late in afternoon — it is as- 
tonishing how much dearer is one spot to me since 
I planned a scene there for my romance." 

In 1866, he finished the "Memorial Biographies" 
and wrote, "Liberty at last." A few days later his 
diary chronicles, "Offer from Fields to write 10 arti- 
cles for 'Atlantic' for $1000 — from Jan. 1." Of one 
of these papers, "A Driftwood Fire," he wrote in his 
diary: — 



276 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"Jan. 24, 1867. When I print a thing like the 
Driftwood Fire — which seems to me to have a finer 
touch in it than anything I ever wrote — I feel as if 
it were thrown into the sea and as if nobody living 
cared for it. How can a man write who does not en- 
joy intensely the writing itself as I do? When I first 
read anything of mine in print, it is with perfect 
delight — then comes depression and the doubt 
whether anybody cares for such things and then I 
let it go, and get interested in something else." 

His birthday meditations that year ran thus: — 

" Looking back ... I feel renewed gratitude for 
that wonderful cheerfulness and healthiness of 
nature I inherited from my mother. This season 
always gives some feeling of loneliness to one of my 
temperament who is childless . . . and whose home 
is a hospital and who sees the only object of his care 
in tears of suffering daily. . . . And while literary 
sympathy or encouragement come slowly, I yet do 
surely feel an enriching of the mind this winter, 
more ideality, more constructive and creative fac- 
ulty — such as I should think my Driftwood Fire 
would prove to all, if anybody cared for such things. 
For I am sometimes haunted with the feeling that it 
is too soon for any ideal treatment in America. Who 
reads 'Twice-Told Tales' ?" 

In 1867, Colonel Higginson translated various 
sonnets from Petrarch, wrote essays and short 
stories for the " Atlantic," continued his army pa- 
pers, and compiled a little book by request of Tick- 



OLDPORT DAYS 277 

nor and Fields, called "Child Pictures from Dick- 
ens," which was issued at the time of Dickens's 
second visit to this country. 

The summary of a single day's occupation, jotted 
down in the diary, illustrates the truth of Mr. A. 
Bronson Alcott's description of Colonel Higginson 
as "a man of tasks." In one day he had revised a 
memoir for one of the numerous literary aspirants 
who continually sought his sympathetic aid, writ- 
ten a book notice and several letters, made the 
first draughts of two " Independent" articles, aided 
in a written examination of the high school for one 
and a half hours in the afternoon, and spent two and 
a half hours examining school papers in the evening, 
besides his usual exercise. 

In the summer of this year (1867), he embodied 
some of his translations of Petrarch's sonnets in a 
paper which he thus described in a letter |o J. T. 
Fields, whom he called his poet-publisher: — - 

"I am writing a species of rhapsody called Sun- 
shine and Petrarch, supposed to be written out-of- 
doors; a kind of plum pudding, Nature ftirnishing 
the pudding — Petrarch the plums, translated son- 
nets being inserted at proper intervals. It is charm- 
ing to the writer which is dangerous, as the ratio of 
fascination is generally inverted ere reaching the 
public. As puddings should be thoroughly boiled, 
I shall keep this the rest of the week, probably." 



278 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

His diary records : — 

"For the first time took my Petrarch writing out- 
doors ... sat at different points, chiefly at Myers 
House — yard full of spiraea, lilac, clover, grass in 
blossom, daisies — robin's nest oddly placed in 
birch tree far out on bough. A delicious time!" 

In 1903, a dainty volume of these sonnets was pub- 
lished and a copy sent through the American ambas- 
sador to Queen Marguerite of Italy who received it 
with gracious commendation. The book also re- 
ceived a flattering reception from an Italian society 
at Arezzo formed to honor Petrarch's memory. 

The beginning of Colonel Higginson's work on 
"Malbone" is thus noted: — 

" To-day I felt an intense longing to work on my 
imaginary novel. . . . The impulse was so strong I 
yielded to it and got a first chapter into shape that 
satisfied. This was enough and afterwards I could 
return to the essay." 

January 1, 1868, he continued: — 

"I know that this Romance (Malbone) is in me 
like the statue in the marble, for every little while I 
catch glimpses of parts of it here and there. I have 
rather held back from it, but a power within steadily 
forces me on ; the characters are forming themselves 
more and more, . . . and it is so attractive to me 
that were it to be my ruin in fame and fortune I 
should still wish to keep on." 



OLDPORT DAYS 279 

On March 1 1 , he wrote four pages for the story, and 
says, "I enjoy this extremely and am much encour- 
aged, but cannot afford to reject the offer to write 
Margaret Fuller's life." This was an article for a 
volume by different writers called " Eminent Women 
of the Age," and for the same publication Mr. Hig- 
ginson wrote a memoir of Lydia Maria Child. His 
biography of Margaret Fuller Ossoli was published 
sixteen years later in the " American Men of Letters 
Series." 

A few days later, he had accomplished — 

" 5 pages Malbone — and letter to N.Y. Standard. 
I have now 50 pages of this novel. For the first time 
perhaps I have something to write which so interests 
me it is very hard to leave it even for necessary exer- 
cise. I hate to leave it a moment — and yet I have 
to write about Margaret Fuller." 

A week later, he added : — 

"6 pages Ossoli. Like this very well, but grudge 
the time taken from Malbone, about which I was 
beginning to feel very happy. 

"I do not think that anything except putting on 
uniform and going into camp has ever given me such 
a sense of new strange fascinating life, as the thought 
that I can actually construct a novel. It is as if I 
had learned to fly." 

In April he decided not to interrupt "Malbone" 



280 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



again, but to postpone "Army Life" if necessary, 
and adds : — 

"Told Fields about Malbone — and he was very 
sympathetic and asked many questions and said 
must have it in ' Atlantic. '" 

Before the book appeared, the author reflected: — 

"It is impossible for me to tell what will be 
thought of this book, whether it will be found too 
shallow or too grave, too tragic or too tame; I only 
know that I have enjoyed it more than anything I 
ever wrote (though writing under great disadvan- 
tages) and that the characters are like real men and 
women to me, though not one of them was, strictly 
speaking, imitated from life, as a whole.' ' 

Yet two of the characters in " Malbone" were sug- 
gested by real persons. Many of Aunt Jane's witty 
sayings had originated with Mrs. Higginson, and 
Philip Malbone was drawn from memories of Hurl- 
but, the author's early friend. On September 25, 
he had ended the story and sent it to Fields, and 
quoted in his diary a passage from Browning's 
"Paracelsus": — 

"Are there not ... 
Two points in the adventure of a diver, 
One — when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge, 
One — when, a prince, he rises with his pearl? 
Festus, I plunge!" 

In November he had finished working over the 

manuscript and says: — 



OLDPORT DAYS 281 

"There is, with all my fussy revising and altering, 
always a point where a work seems to take itself into 
its own hands . . . and I can no more control it than 
an apple-tree its fallen apples.' ' 

The advent of "Malbone" was announced to the 
writer's sisters with this comment: — 

"I expect dismay on your part, my dear sisters, 
before you see it and perhaps after — but I had to 
write it. I enjoyed it so much, so we must acquiesce." 

After the book was actually published (1869), he 
wrote: — 

"As for my new literary venture, it is received 
with quiet approbation apparently though not with 
eagerness. ... It seemed strange to me to hold my 
own novel in my hand, after all the thought and 
feeling I had put into it — and after thinking for so 
many years that I never could or would write one." 

The announcement of an English reprint of " Mal- 
bone" pleased the author, and when in after years 
he revisited the scene of the story, he wrote in his 
diary: — 

"Walked along the bay, beside the empty houses, 
and the dismantled house where I wrote Malbone. 
The fog bell tolled and the whole scene was full of 
ghosts; how long it seemed since those dreamy sum- 
mers! That was the ideal epoch of my life: I have 
written nothing like that since and may not again." 



282 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

In January, 1869, he continued: — 

11 1 begin this year with a feeling of publicity and 
perhaps assured position such as never before. This 
is due to the reception of Malbone and my paper 
on the Greek Goddesses and also to lecturing more 
and to my participation in Woman's Suffrage Move- 
ment, Grand Army affairs and (prospectively) Free 
Religious Convention ... I like it — and especially 
in view of the diminished society around me in 
Newport." 

In April he felt "rather tired of writing, ,, and held 
back from his " Army Life," adding, " Shall I compel 
myself to it?" However, he was soon hard at work 
on this collection of army papers, and on September 
22, wrote: — 

"'Army Life in a Black Regiment* published to- 
day. It is amazing how indifferent I feel as to the 
reception of this book, compared with 'Malbone/ 
which was so near my heart. It scarcely awakens the 
slightest emotion." 

But a little later this feeling changed : — 

"After reading a graphic military novel turned 
to my 'Army Life* and read it with surprise and 
interest; and with a sort of despair at the compara- 
tive emptiness of all other life after that." 

Twenty years afterward, he wrote to Dr. Rogers : — 

"Those times are ever fresh and were perhaps the 
flower of our lives." 



OLDPORT DAYS 283 

After the publication of "Malbone" and "Army 
Life," Colonel Higginson was able to command a 
higher price for his writings. 

"This is a substantial gain from my increased 
reputation," he reflected. "But after all no amount 
for mere writing yields a large income — only 
lecturing pays. ... I have never in my life felt so 
easy as to money as in the 3 months past — nor sure 
of so large an audience — but I feel the intellectual 
solitude here more than formerly." 

The year after "Malbone" appeared, its author 
began "to have a great craving after another story 
— even if nobody cares for it but myself. . . . Some- 
times I fancy that I am wasting my life in trying to 
be an architect of Alhainbra for a people who de- 
mand plain brick and mortar. I see a dozen themes 
for tragedy just around me — the want is not of 
material but of demand. ... So slowly has my small 
portion of reputation been acquired that it always 
rather surprises me if any one cares for anything I 
write." 

One of this busy author's amusements was planning 
for more literary work than he could possibly accom- 
plish, making out lists of projected essays and stories. 
"Thinking of many books lately [to write]," says 
the journal. "A little money would help me wonder- 
fully about these." On a page of his 1872 diary is a 



284 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

list of ten books which he had planned to write, the 
last of which was to be "The Intellectual History 
of Woman." Of this he wrote, " My magnum opus, 
if I can really ever get to it." For this contemplated 
work Colonel Higginson collected for many years 
all the books he could find bearing on the develop- 
ment of woman. The " magnum opus" was never 
really attempted, but the collection of books num- 
bering several hundred volumes in a variety of lan- 
guages was finally given to the Boston Public Li- 
brary and entitled the "Galatea Collection," the 
name being suggested by the old fable of Pygmalion 
and Galatea. Higginson took great interest in add- 
ing to this unique collection from time to time, being 
assisted in this rare pastime of buying books by an 
annual donation for the purpose from Mr. Carnegie. 
But his attention was soon turned to a different sort 
of history. 

At this time there was great need of an attractive 
juvenile history of the United States, and Mr. 
George B. Emerson, a popular Boston educator, sug- 
gested to Colonel Higginson that he should furnish 
such a book. To make this plan practicable, Mr. 
Emerson advanced one thousand dollars to supply 
the means of livelihood while the task was under 
way. " I am trying to write a History of the United 
States for young people," reported the new his- 



OLDPORT DAYS 285 

torian after a year's labor, " but don't know whether 
it will be readable after all." While collecting ma- 
terial for the book, he records writing one day ten 
postal cards in "10 languages — English, French, 
Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Swedish, 
Latin, Greek, Hebrew." 

The first draught was considered by Mr. Emerson 
too juvenile, and it was therefore necessary to re- 
write it. The work was finally completed in 1874 
and the author wrote : — 

" It is a relief to me at last to have this work done, 
as it pressed on me a good deal, and especially this 
month. On the whole I have rather enjoyed it, 
though so long continued a work. ... I should not 
have a doubt [as to its success] were it written by any 
one else. My luck may turn but I don't think I was 
born to be rich. I have had to economize unusually 
these last two years, for Mr. Emerson's $1000 has 
been far from compensating for the time I have 
given. And unless I clear something beyond that 
first $1000 which goes to him, I shall be out of 
pocket. 

n* "It will be pleasant to think, in any case, that I 
have done something to make American history 
clear and attractive." 

This book inaugurated a new era in writing history 
for children, and Mr. Emerson assured the author 
that he had done the world a great service. After the 
history was in print, Higginson wrote: — 



286 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

" What puzzles me about the Young Folks' history 
is that work which so often (certainly) dragged in the 
writing should be found so universally attractive in 
the reading. . . . 

" I was in Boston on Wednesday (a few weeks after 
the publication) and found the 9th thousand of the 
history then in press — about 6000 of these sold and 
ordered, and constant demand. They feel very con- 
fident of a continued sale, by all the signs. I am now 
making some farther alterations for a new edition. 
The publishers wish me to make a manual of Uni- 
versal History now — pleasant offer! 

" I think I have now for the first time accepted the 
fact that I have achieved a worldly success at last 
and may really have those additional few hundred 
dollars a year that would seem wealth to me. Per- 
haps even this year I may. ... It does not excite me, 
but I confess to agreeable sensations." 

A month later the diary records : — 

"A memorable day. In the morning I had a note 
telling that Mr. Shepard expected to sell 40,000 of 
the Young Folks' History this year and 200,000 in all. 
. . . Then at evening came the kindest letter from 
Mr. Emerson saying that he was 'sufficiently re- 
paid' for the money advanced on the book, and 
should not take it back. This munificence gives me 
$1000 additional in August — probably $2000 in all. 
For the first time, I think, I begin really to believe 
that I am to have some money to spend — after 
fifty years of care and economy. This economy I 
have never really disliked, indeed have found a cer- 



OLDPORT DAYS 287 

tain amusement and satisfaction in. But I shall like 
the other still better, though it will be hard to adapt 
myself and even now I can hardly count on it." 

These half-doubting anticipations received a 
check three months later in the financial failure of 
his publishers. 

"It is curious," he meditated, "to study the cur- 
rents of life. For 3 months I have felt as if I really 
had some money — but now the great depression of 
business prevents Lee and Shepard from collecting 
or sending and I have been obliged to be more care- 
ful than ever, this month. . . . How suddenly my 
supposed increase of income has been interrupted and 
I have even less than before. Waldo said, ' It only 
involves some waiting!' I said, 'I've been waiting 
all my life.' 

"Sept. 16. To Boston — Lee and Shepard — 
meeting of creditors — about that convenient little 
cup that has slipped from my lips. However I had 
for two months the sensations of a comfortable 
income. . . . 

"Sept. 25. Tried in vain to write; I am so heavily 
weighed down with anxiety and care between M.'s 
wretched condition and Lee and Co.'s failure that it 
is almost impossible for me to write. The walls seem 
only to draw closer around me year by year." 

But this depression was only temporary, and in 
October the tables were turned. 

"All my life I have had a sort of Bank of Faith in 



288 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

money matters," wrote the relieved author, "when 
pretty low I always expect a windfall — so to-day 
came a letter from Lee & Shepard . . . with check for 
$247.95 for sales since their failure ... a very reas- 
suring letter at once removing that uncertainty for 
the future which was my chief solicitude/ ' 

This successful history was translated into French 
in 1875, and two editions were published. In 1876, a 
German version was printed, and it was translated 
into Italian in 1888. In May, 1879, the book was 
adopted by the Boston public schools. This seemed 
to the author "a real access of fortune — yet I al- 
ways think how little money can give after all." One 
of the best endorsements of the book came from a 
boy of eight, the son of a Harvard professor, who de- 
clared, "I like your History of the United States 
about as well as the Odyssey." Another came from a 
teacher in North Carolina: " My class is intensely in- 
terested in it [Young Folks* History]. The book has 
in it more to arouse the child's patriotism than any 
book that I have ever seen. . . . The teaching pro- 
fession is under many obligations to you." In 1905, 
an edition of this History was, by private generosity, 
printed in raised letters for the blind. 

The Higginsons made an occasional attempt at 
housekeeping, and during the latter part of Mrs. 
Higginson's life they were able to keep up this mode 



OLDPORT DAYS 289 

of living, which gave both much pleasure. " We have 
now in the kitchen," wrote the Colonel," as cook, the 
black minister's mother, very large and 70 — she 
. . . gets on well, makes pretty bad bread and is too 
old to come upstairs." Again: "Able to enjoy a 
quiet Thanksgiving at home. M. was very happy 
and the little house seemed very pleasant. I desire 
not to get used to it, but to keep freshly in mind 
what a pleasure it is to have a home." 

The diary of 1870 recorded that the writer was 
reading and planning for Europe. On each birthday 
or New Year's Day, Colonel Higginson wrote in his 
journal a brief summary of his life, and under date of 
January 1 , 1 870, occurs the following : — 

"I begin the year under some new spiritual influ- 
ences, I hope, with some firmer purposes, more pa- 
tience. I shall miss 'Malbone' and feel yearly the 
want of social interests here — but I have the pros- 
pect of Europe, which will be a great era." 

This plan was sorrowfully relinquished, and in March 
he wrote : — 

"I am suffering under unusual depression, for me, 
partly the disappointment about Europe . . . and 
partly the stagnation of this place and my monoto- 
nous life." 

However, two years later the European project 
was revived and he actually went abroad for two 



290 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

months, his sister Anna taking his place during his 
absence. An account of this memorable visit to Eu- 
rope will be found in a later chapter. 

In 1876, Mr. Higginson began to write reviews of 
11 recent poetry" for the ''Nation," and this critical 
work was continued for more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury. Looking over his outdoor notebook he ex- 
claimed, "How I should love to devote the greater 
part of the summer to insects — but I am now more 
committed to the study of men and women." 

During his wife's long helplessness, Colonel Hig- 
ginson's devotion was unceasing, and when the end 
came, September 2, 1877, he wrote to a friend: — 

" My wife died . . . after a week's illness of 'intes- 
tinal fever.' She has been losing strength this sum- 
mer and was perhaps unable to throw off an attack 
that she could else have resisted. She did not suffer 
much and closed her courageous life quietly. You are 
one of those whose personal experience has taught 
you what it is to lose an object of care; how little 
there seems left to be done, how strange and almost 
unwelcome the freedom." 

The long continued weight of responsibility could 
not at once be thrown off, and for a time Colonel 
Higginson was haunted by the bewildering thought 
that he was neglecting his duty. This feeling was 
expressed in his touching unpublished verses, called 



OLDPORT DAYS 291 

"Relieved from Guard," two of which are given 

below : — 

"O! I shrink from this untried freedom 
In a world I do not know. 
Give me back the long, long watching 
And the pacing to and fro! 

"They will pass, these weak repinings; 
And only one thought be hard, 
That I know not which of God's angels 
Is now at my post, on guard!" 



XIV 

RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 

In the spring of 1878, Colonel Higginson went abroad 
for several months. After his return in the autumn, 
he moved his goods and chattels to Cambridge. 
Here he took delight in planning a new home, and in 
February, 1879, was quietly married to the writer of 
this memoir. His old friend, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, 
performed the ceremony. The "being beauteous" of 
Longfellow's poem, " Footsteps of Angels," was my 
mother's sister, and the poet was present at the 
wedding. 

A visit made soon afterward to my kindred in 
Harper's Ferry was described by Colonel Higginson 
in a letter to his sister : — 

"You can imagine nothing more curious than our 
arrival at Harper's Ferry. It was in the evening. . . . 
The train stopped in a dismantled sort of station 
where stood an old man with soft white hair on his 
shoulders holding a lantern and attended by two 
blooming, fair-haired daughters; they seized us with 
joy. There seemed no houses anywhere and we set 
off to walk across ruined pavements feebly lighted by 
the one lantern. Presently they turned up a flight of 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 293 

stone steps. ... At the top we saw a lighted chapel 
and throngs of people were descending from it. We 
went up and up with the dim outlines of river and 
mountains below us and the sound of the waters over 
their shallow bed; then we turned into a narrow 
street or lane paved with the natural rock and with 
high narrow stone houses chiefly in ruins. ... It was 
all precisely like a Swiss or Italian mountain village 
and I felt as if I had made one step from Zermatt. 

"The church was the family church, they being 
Roman Catholics. The old Doctor is of Irish birth 
and has lived all his life in Virginia. His house is one 
of a block of four, two in ruins and empty belonging 
also to him. From another ruined house the cow 
looks out all day. . . . Our arriving was an excite- 
ment to all Harper's Ferry. All knew that the bridal 
party was coming. In the evening came Jacob [a 
Negro factotum]. He brought the largest round of 
beef I ever saw — with only us two to eat it until 
Easter, this being Friday — also a basket of provi- 
sions, and himself most important of all. He cooked, 
talked, waited at table in a Madras turban and glo- 
rified himself through the village at other times. . . . 
On opening an unexpected curtain in the morning, 
the whole glorious valley view was before us. . . . 
The poor town looked shabby and ruined by day"; 
[but there were Turkey rugs and the rustle of silk 
gowns in the crumbling old house]. " During the war 
they were here when only five families staid in the 
town. After eight all windows had to be darkened, 
otherwise the Union pickets fired on them from the 
Maryland heights and the rebels from the other side. 



294 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

There were bullet marks on the table. . . . We had a 
beautiful drive up the Shenandoah hills with Blue 
Ridge always in sight, amid large farms looking like 
Pennsylvania and very fertile. We went to Charles- 
town, eight miles, a flourishing village with nice 
houses and buildings. Here we saw the jail yard 
where John Brown was confined, the field where he 
was executed, the new court house on the site where 
he was tried, and most interesting of all, the very 
records of the trial of him and his men — the succes- 
sive entries alternating with the commonest things. 
The road we came was that over which they were 
brought, wounded, from Harper's Ferry. The only 
memorial of him at the latter place is the little build- 
ing close by the railroad — the engine house which 
he held — which has 'John Brown's Fort' painted 
on it." 

After this trip, we began housekeeping, and then 
Colonel Higginson earnestly threw himself into the 
interests of his native town. In January, 1880, our 
first little daughter was born and called Louisa for 
her grandmother Higginson. On the day that his 
lifelong wish for a child was realized, Colonel Higgin- 
son wrote in his journal : — 

"God! May I be worthy of the wonderful mo- 
ment when I first looked round and saw the face of 
my child. . . . How trivial seem all personal aims and 
ambitions beside the fact that I am at last the father 
of a child. Should she die to-morrow she will still be 
my child somewhere. But she will not die." 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 295 

When seven days old the baby received a visit 
from the poet Longfellow, who saw beauty and intel- 
ligence in her face, and said she had the hands of a 
musician. l ' These three, ' ' wrote her father, ' ' beauty, 
observation, and music, when coming from the lips 
of a poet were quite equivalent to gifts from a fairy 
godmother." 

Although the child seemed very robust, when a 
few weeks old she died of meningitis after one day's 
illness. "Thus end our pride and our earthly hope," 
wrote the bereaved father. "Yet so unspeakable has 
been the joy of her little life; so profound and won- 
derful the feeling of parentage; so perfect a sense of 
individuality about this baby child that we shall 
soon be able to thank God for all. ... O but the 
heart-break and the yearning! . . . O the hopes, the 
dreams, the fancies all now done, or exchanged for 
profounder thought belonging in the world unseen." 
A niece of Colonel Higginson's recalls the burial and 
writes: "I shall never forget Uncle Wentworth's 
beautiful, transfigured look when he said in a broken 
yet strong voice, 'The Lord gave, the Lord hath 
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' " 
After a few weeks' absence, the Colonel with his 
usual elasticity wrote: " To-day we are back again in 
our dear home and I feel a sense of new life and joy 
and hope this lovely spring day." 



296 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

The following summer was spent at Plymouth, 
New Hampshire, where we jogged about with an old 
horse named Dorcas, studied ferns, and ransacked 
farms for old furniture. Colonel Higginson once had 
an opportunity while there to indulge his boyish pas- 
sion for responding to fire-alarms. He had estab- 
lished himself on a roof to help extinguish the flames 
of a burning house and was startled when he heard 
the order, "Hand the bucket to the old gentleman !" 
— this being the first time he had been thus desig- 
nated. From Plymouth the same season he made 
the wild ascent of Mount Moosilauke described in 
his "Atlantic" article, "A Search for the Pleiades." 
This paper so pleased the proprietor of the mountain 
hotel that he offered the author rooms and board 
gratis for the next season. At the end of the summer, 
this note was made in the diary : — 

"The old love of nature seems to have come back 
and the sorrow which threatened to overshadow us 
has been mercifully soothed. I have neither ' looked 
before nor after nor pined for what is not/ " 

In the fall of 1880, he was chosen representative to 
the legislature, where he served for two years. The 
same year he accepted an invitation from Governor 
Long to serve as chief of his staff. While in the legis- 
lature, of course he championed the Woman's Suf- 
frage Bill. It is stated on good authority that "cer- 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 297 

tain Irish members, who hated Woman's Suffrage 
but loved the Colonel, sat outside growling while the 
vote was taken. They could not bring themselves to 
vote for the bill, but would not annoy Higginson by 
voting against it." 

In December of the same year we moved into 
the little Queen Anne cottage on Buckingham Street 
which we had built and which was henceforth Colo- 
nel Higginson's home. A certain policeman's opinion 
of this new abode afforded much amusement to the 
owner. When asked where Colonel Higginson lived, 
this guardian of the peace replied, " Look till you see 
the ugliest house in Cambridge." Another, some- 
what later, opinion was that of our daughter Mar- 
garet, who said, "O papa, I am glad you are not 
rich ! You have such a dainty little clean house and 
not fancy either — no lace curtains at all." 

The fifty-seventh birthday, December 22, 1880, 
was celebrated by skating on Fresh Pond, and he 
wrote to his sister: — 

" I have not been on that black ice for more than 
thirty years and it seemed a very appropriate birth- 
day celebration, the ice and hills and sky were so un- 
changed. It led me to the thought that this is cer- 
tainly the happiest birthday since those days and 
probably of my life. It is such inexpressible happi- 
ness to have at last a permanent home and one so 
wholly to my mind and to look around and think 



298 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

that all in it is ours and we are not temporary occu- 
pants of the comforts of others only." 

In July, 1 88 1, a second little daughter arrived and 
was named Margaret Waldo. These were family 
names, and, contrary to popular belief, were not 
borrowed from Margaret Fuller and Emerson. 
"Rejoice with us!" her father wrote to a friend; 
" another little girl, as fine and beautiful as her elder 
sister!" After three months he declared, " A more 
blissful possession no one ever owned. . . . The dar- 
ling baby seems to have brought a good omen in 
every way." 

In reference to his legislative experience, Higgin- 
son wrote : — 

" I went to the legislature (having both years had 
the nomination wholly unsought) because it was a 
thing I had thought I should always like to try. . . . 
I have never thought for an instant of 'going into 
politics ' as people say, but simply took it as it came 
my way knowing it would not last long. ... I also 
tried nearly a year ago to get off the staff thinking I 
had done the Governor all the services I could, but 
he was unwilling . . . going to Cowpens was a great 
privilege and opportunity and in a manner a piece 
of poetic justice. . . . Last summer the Governor 
wished me to be a trustee of a lunatic hospital which 
I declined. This year after resigning my place on 
staff he wished me to take either a similar trustee- 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 299 

ship vacant — or to go on the Board of Education. 
With some reluctance I did the latter." 

The allusion to Cowpens referred to the address 
which Colonel Higginson gave in May, 1881, at 
Spartansburg, South Carolina, the occasion being 
the celebration of the Battle of Cowpens during the 
Revolution, which Bancroft called the "most extra- 
ordinary victory of the war." Governor Long had 
requested his chief of staff to represent Massachu- 
setts and incidentally the original New England 
States at the one hundredth anniversary of this bat- 
tle, although it was one in which the New England 
colonies had no direct share. The letter quoted above 
continues: — 

"All these things have much interfered with liter- 
ature and I was getting impatient with myself and 
feeling that I had lost power of writing. Then on 
waking very early one morning I suddenly decided 
to make a book out of my 'Woman's Journal' arti- 
cles and similar things. I jumped up, went down- 
stairs for a volume of the 'Woman's Journal' and 
began in bed the process of selection which went 
rapidly on and now the book is finished. . . . And 
this detour into public life has been an immense 
benefit to me in the way of extempore speaking 
which is now really no effort at all. 

"The result of all is that I am a truly happy 
man and can well wait and accept whatever comes — 



3 oo THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

only knowing that I cannot have that boundless 
horizon of years (at 57) that stretches before one at 
forty or almost at fifty. Margaret gives me a new 
love of life, and I should like, at 75, to go into com- 
pany with her at 18 ! " 

On Thanksgiving Day of the same year, he yet 
further moralized : — 

"That I should at 57 have the happiness dreamed 
of (as impossible) for so many years — with a healthy 
and beautiful baby of my own . . . and a charming 
home . . . this is a boon beyond asking or thanking. 
I have had much of what the world calls success and 
yet feel profoundly what Howells suggests that per- 
haps success always looks like failure from inside. I 
have what would have seemed to me reputation and 
wealth from the standpoint of my early years; I have 
also a singular health of body and youthfulness of 
mind ; even the fire of passion and adventure is I fear 
unabated in me; but in the anchorage of my own 
home I am guaranteed from danger. . . . My imagi- 
nation is as active as ever, and my literary faculty ; 
they are only checked by" the multiplicity of cares 
and interests that come with advancing years." 

On his sixty-third birthday, the author wrote, 
"Can work better than ever in my life." And 
again : — 

"Had a striking instance to-day of that great 
wealth and activity of mind which seems to come to 
me in rushes for a short time together especially the 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 301 

first thing in the morning. In fifteen minutes ... I 
entirely planned two addresses on distinct subjects 
— the birthday address at Concord on Emerson and 
the address for the blind. . . . For all this — but 
chiefly for my wife, child and home, let me give 
thanks. . . . Whenever I think of illness or death, 
then it seems beautiful to have one child on earth 
and one in heaven." 

In 1882, he began the chapters of his " Larger His- 
tory of the United States,' ' which were published in 
"Harper's Magazine"; of these he told his sister, 
August 24, 1883, "I have written one of my Harper's 
papers regularly every month for the last eleven 
months; besides other things too much for any- 
body." It was a rare thing for him to admit that he 
worked beyond his strength, but such was often the 
case. In the autumn of this year, Colonel Higginson 
wrote to his sister : — 

"I invited Matthew Arnold to spend a few days 
with us, but he is not coming, being engaged to 
Phillips Brooks." 

And later : — 

"This morning I spent in taking Matthew Arnold 
to schools in Boston. . . . He is very cordial and ap- 
preciative, not in the least cynical, or patronizing." 

In the poem called "Sixty and Six," Colonel Hig- 
ginson describes the joy he found in the "blithe lit- 



302 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

tie, lithe little daughter of mine." The following ex- 
tracts, referring to his new and absorbing possession, 
are taken partly from his letters and partly from his 
diaries : — 

" To-day the crocuses are up and I have been tak- 
ing off part of their covering of leaves. ... But what 
is all the promise of early spring beside the round 
rosy cheeks of our darling, her great earnest brown 
eyes and her happy little face. . . . 

" Margaret rosy and sunburnt with dandelions and 
sand-pies said this morning, 'Oh, won't it be beauti- 
ful in the autumn, when it is all red and ripe* . . . 
then she added, 'I do like it awfully.' 'What?' She 
looked down meditatively a moment and said, 'To 
live.' . . . Baby is wheeling her little barrow of red 
crab-apples under the trees. . . . Every morning she 
wakes laughing. We hear this delicious little singing 
sound from her crib. . . . You may well imagine that 
I could not have a happier birthday celebration than 
to take baby out for the first time on her new sled! 
. . . Showed her little icicles which interested her like 
a new flower and she picked them off eagerly. ... It 
is delicious thus to show her for the first time one 
wonder after another in the beautiful world. We 
threw snowballs too. . . . She inherits from me 
amusingly a trait I remember very well and still oc- 
casionally manifest — a dislike to being watched 
when doing anything difficult. ' Pe'se don't watz 
me,' she often says. . . . Margaret had this morning 
her first introduction to the masterpieces of English 
literature. She brings a copy of 'Christobel.' Papa 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 303 

objects : ' But that has no picture.' ' Papa read Baby 
'at/ Papa dutifully reads — 

11 ' 'T is the middle of the night by the castle clock 
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock.' 

Baby points to the stuffed owl in the hall. ' Dere he 
are.' Then Papa reads on about the toothless mastiff 
bitch with illustrative ' bow-wows.' Baby runs to 
the window, looks out and says, ' Where bow-wow? ' 
Then returning says, 'Papa, play ball,' having had 
enough of English literature for the first time. 

"She has had a great access of lovingness lately. 
'Papa, I love you so much it breaks my heart'; or 
'Papa, I shall never leave you.' . . . Margaret said 
this morning, ' What church shall I go to when I am 
big enough? Why do people go to church?' After 
some reflection I said, 'To learn to be good.' After 
some reflection she said, ' But they're good already! ' 
— a happy conviction. 

"This morning she asked her favorite question, 
'Where God?' and when her mother said, 'He is 
everywhere,' she answered with superior informa- 
tion, 'He in Heabby' (Heaven). . . . She is growing 
sternly speculative. ' Papa dear, do the little fishes 
at the Botanic Garden like to be caught? ' ' No, dear.' 
'Well, they've got to be caught or how can we have 
fish to eat? ' I do think it would be much prettier to 
[follow a] vegetarian [diet] in rearing children ; I hate 
to have her kill even a mosquito, it seems to be a 
profanation of her own life. I tell her to drive them 
away as papa does — but even then I kill clothes- 
moths — not in her presence, though. . . . She said 



304 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

one time when I was neglectful, 'Papa, why don't 
you amuse me? That is what you came into the 
world for, to amuse people.' . . . When we spoke of 
some one's being married — she slipping down to 
my side as usual, 'Papa, whisper! What is mar- 
ried? ' (Papa, hesitating.) ' It is when two people live 
together in a house.' 'Well, then you and I are 
married.'" 

To the above record of this close companionship 
Colonel Higginson added : — 

"I have always hoped that if I might not live to 
see her grow up, I might at least fix myself so defi- 
nitely in her memory that I should always be a 
vivid and tender recollection and of this I now for 
the first time feel sure." 

Margaret's first intimation of the difference in age 
came one day when her little hands wandered over 
his face and she exclaimed in a surprised tone, 
" Why, your face is as twinkled as a little star. Any- 
how, Papa, when did you get so many lines in your 
face? " The proud father's little letters to his daugh- 
ter show his innate sympathy with childhood : — 

"Franklin Square, New York. 

"My dear Little Girl: — 

"This morning I went to see if I could find a fur 
coat for dolly, but you see they don't make fur coats 
for dollies. I think you had better catch a little 
mouse and say, 'Please! mousey, will you lend dolly 




THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON AND HIS 
DAUGHTER MARGARET, 1 885 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 305 

your little fur coat/ If he says No, what can we do? 
But it will soon be spring and she will not need it. 

"From your loving Papa/' 

"New York. 
"My dear Little Girl: — 

"This morning I went along a great big street 
called Broadway and what do you think I saw? 
Why, you and me riding on the tricycle; that is I saw 
the picture in a window, where the same photo- 
graphers who took us have a store here in New York! 
Some people stopped to look and one of them said, 
' I wonder who that man is with a little girl behind 
him.' I could have told him, but I did n't. I might 
have said, 'That's Margaret Higginson and I think 
the man must be her papa.' 

"Good-bye, darling. 

"Your own Papa." 

Father and daughter rode on the tricycle together 
until one day he looked around and discovered with 
alarm that the child of four was fast asleep. After 
that he decided to ride alone. 

When Margaret was still a small child we spent 
three successive summers on a farm in Holden, 
Massachusetts, a village near Worcester. It was 
Colonel Higginson's delight both there and in Cam- 
bridge to amuse Margaret's little friends by making 
bonfires and roasting potatoes and apples in the em- 
bers. He wrote to his sister: "We have now a cow, 



306 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

calf, dog, two white fantail pigeons, two kittens and 
expect a lamb to-morrow to complete the me- 
nagerie." Both father and child entered into the 
farm labors, tossing pumpkins into the barn and 
feeding the animals. 

"This has been the after breakfast programme. 
She and I go out of the back door taking with us stale 
bread for the hens, soft bread for the doves; then in 
the barn we get ears of corn for the rabbits and a pan 
of l shorts ' for the calf and lamb. Then we open the 
high gate of the great pleasant poultry yard, sloping 
down the hill and crossed by rows of raspberries and 
roses and sunflowers and apple trees.. The creatures 
all come to us except the rabbits which are in their 
own enclosure within. The hens and ducks scramble 
and flutter; and I always wish I could make a sketch 
in oils of Margaret as she stands rosy and sunburnt 
holding the pan of grain as best she can against the 
vehement appetites of calf and lamb growing daily 
stronger and larger, nudging each other away and 
stretching over or under each other's heads till the 
pan is empty. Then they trot along by us in hope of 
more, the hens and ducks also following till we go 
inside the rabbit hutch and tempt the timid things 
with clover and green corn. Then Margaret looks for 
eggs in the various boxes and we climb on the hay- 
mow to see if the doves are laying. . . . Our two 
white fantails are the most devoted little creatures 
and seem like two immaculate ladies, always keep- 
ing the rooms in order. Yesterday we found some 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 307 

eggs of the common pigeons just hatched ; one little 
creature had got his head out before and his tail be- 
hind but the shell hung round its neck and almost 
choked it till I loosened it; I never helped a pigeon 
into the world before." 

In the village of Holden, Colonel Higginson ren- 
dered signal service, as was his wont in all his abiding 
places, by advice as to the management of the library 
and selection of books, by willingness to give public 
addresses, and by his kindly interest in the people of 
the town, all of which was warmly appreciated. One 
of the Holden women said to him afterward, "It 
seemed so nice to see you there; you seemed like one 
of us" ; and the diary commented, "This identifying 
with the simple village life is what I like best about 
it all." 

To go back to Cambridge; it was in February, 
1884, that the occupations of one week were thus 
enumerated : — 

"During the last week I have had the laborious 
and careful closing days of my 'Life of Madame 
Ossoli ' ; have spoken four evenings (out of five succes- 
sive evenings) on four different subjects, two of them 
new /and have had the great excitement and absorp- 
tion of Phillips's death and funeral, with two papers 
to write on him — one ('Evening Post') very elab- 
orate, besides one speech about him and revising 
the report. All this has made more work than I hope 



308 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

ever to be entangled in again. I have had the imme- 
diate prospect too of two more chapters in ' Harper/ 
and a revision of my 'Young Folks' History/ these 
being demanded at once." 

He adds : — 

"I finished and sent the last of my 'Harper' pa- 
pers and also corrected the last proof of my Ossoli 
book. Thus ends the most anxious literary task I 
ever undertook and one which I shall never try again 
— virtually writing two difficult books at the same 
time." 

Of his weekly editorials he said : — 

"Sometimes I have to write my editorials at a 
gallop or not at all." 

Later in the same year he discontinued his papers in 
the "Woman's Journal" and wrote to his sister: — 

"I have engaged to write a weekly article for 
'Harper's Bazar,' under the general heading 'Wo- 
men and Men' similar in tone to my 'Woman's 
Journal' papers, but not entering on the suffrage 
question. On the latter point I expect to write occa- 
sionally in the 'Independent.'" 

And the following winter he noted : — 

"I enjoy writing my 'Bazar' papers, having an 
audience of 100,000 all over the world." 

In 1884, Colonel Higginson also plunged with 
ardor into the " Mugwump" movement, calling anti- 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 309 

Blaine meetings and making campaign speeches for 
Cleveland. His diary reports an anti-Blaine meet- 
ing in early June, — "Great success, which gratified 
me, since it was I who proposed it and drew up call 
which , was signed by 1500." From the same record 
it appears that in the autumn he gave political ha- 
rangues on five successive evenings in as many 
cities. This letter gives his impressions of Cleve- 
land and Beecher, that of the latter being less 
flattering than an earlier estimate, some thirty years 
before. 

" New York is fairly seething. . . . Business is prac- 
tically suspended — nobody talks of anything but 
politics. . . . Gov. Cleveland was at my hotel. . . . 
I found him a large man, nearly as tall as I and heav- 
ily built . . . decidedly plain, but with a very good 
clear eye and a frank and honest though not hand- 
some mouth. He has not an air of polish — 
rather what we should call a Western than Eastern 
type, — but prepossessing through frankness and 
strength. . . . On the whole my impression was fa- 
vorable. 

"Not so my impression of Beecher, who is the 
only man I have spoken with in public of whom I felt 
ashamed. The Jersey City audience was a regular 
Bowery audience and he took them completely on 
their own level. It was a wonderful exhibition of 
popularity and power, but there was a coarse jaunti- 
ness in his way of treating the attacks on Cleveland 



310 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

that disgusted me. . . . Still Beecher is Beecher, at 
his best and worst/ ' 

Yet politics did not exclude other public inter- 
ests : — 

"May 2, 1885. 

" I had a very good time speaking on Total Absti- 
nence to an excellent audience of young men at 
Sanders Theatre with Mrs. Livermore, who ap- 
peared admirably. It was a rainy evening but we 
had a much better audience than Phillips Brooks 
who preached at St. John's Chapel." 

A curious result of this meeting was the arrival at 
our home, on the same evening, of six bottles of wine 
labelled "For a man who has the courage of his con- 
victions." 

There happened to be in Worcester in this very 
year a reunion of the Company which Colonel Hig- 
ginson had recruited. " It was a bewildering evening 
and night," he wrote, "living back 21 years in an 
hour. The youngest member of the Company who 
enlisted at 17 is far grayer than I. All night I could 
hardly get back from the strange resurrection of my 
first army experiences — so intense and utterly ab- 
sorbing — now so inconceivably remote." 

It was always a pleasure to Colonel Higginson to 
live over his dreams by relating them to his family. 
As early as 1844, when a theological student, he 
recorded this one : — 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 311 

"I was mingling in the concerns of life as usual 
and suddenly became aware of the presence of a red 
haired wife and two children with large gray eyes ; I 
remember distinctly my utter astonishment and dis- 
may at finding myself so emphatically in for it with- 
out any personal consciousness or accountability; 
what steps I took on the matter I don't know, but 
I have certainly got rid of the incumbrances this 
morning much to my relief." 

And when he was eighty-five he wrote : — 

" I find that my dreams grow more interesting all 
the time because they have more material in them 
from the 'hoarded memories of the past,' as Brown- 
ing says." 

In the summer of 1886, he wrote the story, "The 
Monarch of Dreams." It was his first effort in the 
story-telling line for many years, and he exclaimed : — 
" It is a great and almost unexpected delight to me 
to find that I can really write an imaginative story." 
This tale did not prove acceptable to magazine 
editors and was finally published as a booklet at the 
author's own expense. "The Monarch of Dreams" 
was, however, translated into French and was al- 
ways a favorite of the author's. His relatives fancied 
that this weird little tale had a morbid tinge, and in 
answer to their solicitudes, he wrote: — 

"I am sorry I printed it, if it troubled you, but I 
never can be sorry that I wrote it, for it is the first 



312 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

strong bit of purely imaginative work I ever did and 
I shall always be glad to know that I could do it, and 
it was a real vacation after so much historical and 
critical work. ... I like to do things in order to know 
that I can do them; and the old spirit of adventur- 
ousness still lives in me." 

The latter statement was proved when the strike of 
the street-car employees in Cambridge occurred, and 
he wrote in his diary in March, 1887: — 

" Evening to Cambridgeport to meet procession of 
strikers — rode through them on platform of car; 
one stone hit me. Find myself enjoying the little 
danger as of yore." 

After another car-ride he reported : — 

"The young trolley conductor told me that he had 
just taken ' Cheerful Yesterdays ' from the library and 
that it was the third book of mine he had read. He 
spoke especially of the anti-slavery part and has been 
sorry not to hear me on Irish wrongs at Town Hall." 

In May, 1886, Emily Dickinson died. Her ac- 
quaintance with Colonel Higginson began in 1862, 
when she wrote to him enclosing some poems and 
asking his opinion of her verse. While he was in camp 
in South Carolina she wrote again to ask if he would 
be "her preceptor." Henceforth her letters, in ex- 
traordinary script, were signed "your scholar." One 
summer he made his unseen correspondent a long- 
delayed visit which he has described in the volume 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 313 

called "Carlyle's Laugh." He wrote in his diary 
after her death : — 

"To Amherst to the funeral of that rare and 
strange creature Emily Dickinson. . . . E. D.'s face 
a wondrous restoration of youth — she is 54 and 
looked 30, not a gray hair or wrinkle, and perfect 
peace on the beautiful brow. There was a little 
bunch of violets at the neck and one pink cypripe- 
dium; the sister, Vinnie, put in two heliotropes by 
her hand 'to take to Judge Lord' [an old family 
friend]. I read a poem by Emily Bronte. How large 
a portion of the people who have most interested me 
have passed away." 

But the sad entries in his journal were infrequent 
and presently he recorded : — 

"One of these days on which, as Emerson says, 
! every hour brings book or starlight scroll.' At 
breakfast got letters from England, one from W. 
Sharp about sonnets of mine for his book of Ameri- 
can sonnets — another from asking about my 

literary methods for his pupils. Then came the 
copies of Italian version of my history and finally 
(next day) Mrs. Hood's news that she had 'The 
Open Garden ' ready — her name for illustrations of 
'Outdoor Papers.'" 

There has always been a confusion in the public 
mind between Colonel Wentworth Higginson and 
his cousin, Major Henry Higginson, and musicians 
sometimes applied to the former for a position in the 



314 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Symphony Orchestra. He was wont to say that he 
received everything that was intended for his cousin 
except cheques. Reporting to his family in their ab- 
sence various funny stories that he had heard, he 
added, "But best of all was the news that several 
New York papers have just printed advance puffs of 
the Symphony Orchestra headed by my picture." 
He wrote to his brother-in-law, in July, 1887: — 

" Did you hear that I had been invited to be presi- 
dent of the Handel and Haydn Society? Of course 
I refused, but it seemed as if they wanted a good 
figurehead with a musical name. ' If it be not Bran 
it is Bran's brother,' as the Scotch proverb says." 

Yet Colonel Higginson had a great love of music, 
and a good, though untrained, tenor voice. He usu- 
ally sang while dressing in the morning, and often 
manufactured his own melodies. He composed music 
to Cleveland's "sea-ditty" in Scott's " Pirate," begin- 
ning, " Farewell, farewell," and to sundry Scotch bal- 
lads. "Lassie come near me," and " We'el may we a' 
be," for instance, were put into permanent musical 
form by a friend and one of them was published. 
The Negro melodies heard in camp, he sang with 
our little girl, going through the lively motions and 
gestures with great animation. 

Many organizations secured Colonel Higginson's 
services as president, for longer or shorter periods. 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 315 

Among these were the Appalachian Mountain Club, 
the Boston Browning Club, and the Round Table of 
which he was the first and only president, this office 
lasting for more than twenty-five years. Of one of 
the meetings of this club, he wrote to his sister, No- 
vember, 1 891: — 

"Lady Henry Somerset was at Round Table and 
charmed all — short, square- shouldered, with a fine 
generous face, the simplest and sweetest manner and 
no cant. It seemed her mission to pour oil on trou- 
bled waters. Nothing specially dainty or highbred 
about her, but no English awkwardness or brusque- 
rie. A most mellow voice of course." 

Later the Boston Authors' Club was organized 
through the efforts of Mrs. Howe and Colonel Hig- 
ginson, they bearing to it during the former's life the 
relations of president and vice-president. This asso- 
ciation of interests brought to the latter many amus- 
ing letters from Mrs. Howe, usually beginning "My 
dear Vice." One of the members called this club 
Higginson's "last plaything." 

Among the annual public gatherings which he 
frequently attended was the meeting of the Social 
Science Association at Saratoga, where he presided 
over the educational department or gave addresses. 
He sometimes lectured at Chautauqua which he 
called "An innocent Saratoga." When he went 



316 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

forth on these expeditions to " scream among his 
fellows/' as an irreverent friend was fond of quoting 
from Bryant's "Waterfowl," unforeseen difficulties 
sometimes arose. In such cases a happy versatility 
saved the day, as when in Bangor, in 1887: — 

"Last night I had a good lecture, though I learned 
just as we went into the church door that the subject 
was different from what I had supposed, so that I 
had to switch my thoughts off very suddenly.' ' 

In January, 1888, he meditated: — 

"It is curious to see how my 64th birthday seems 
the turning-point for my reputation such as it is. I 
had a notice of nearly a column with a horrible por- 
trait in a Detroit newspaper and a good many west- 
ern letters referring to it in one way or another, 
showing it well advertised. This somewhat tardy 
repute has the advantage that it comes at a time 
when my head is past turning." 

His interest in public affairs never flagged, and he 
lent his influence to defeat the bill condemning pa- 
rochial schools. "Spoke before Legislative Commit- 
tee," he wrote in his diary for March of the same 
year, "against the private school bill amid a howling 
audience of sectarians." 

In the same year he went West on a lecture trip 

and wrote to his sister: — 

"Kansas City, Junes, 1888. 
"I have got so far, lecturing last night at Law- 
rence (University), here to-night . . . speaking at 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 317 

Topeka on Thursday, going Friday morn to Colo- 
rado Springs. ... I have enjoyed the trip greatly. 
... I saw many of the old Kansasers and many of the 
new; all Kansas is transformed from bareness to a 
land of trees and hedges, greatly to its improvement 
and I had a fine reception from the Students," 

"Colorado Springs, 
"June 11, 

"Here I have revelled in flowers and canons. . . . 
Nothing disappoints except that the prairies when 
green are a far paler green than we are used to and 
Pike's Peak, though it seems to hang directly above 
the town and is still snow-clad, is far less picturesque 
and companionable than our New England moun- 
tains." 

It was impossible not to be drawn into politics and, 
in the fall of 1888, Colonel Higginson was nominated 
as Representative to Congress by the Democrats 
of the Fifth Congressional District. The question 
whether to accept this nomination required much 
deliberation. He wrote in his diary September 23 : — 

"Thinking all day about Congressional proposal 
and decided to decline it. . . . Wrote accordingly in 
evening. 

" Sept. 24. Felt so dissatisfied and troubled at my 
decision that I decided to revoke it . . . and sub- 
stituted another letter. I hope I have at last done 
right, but it is a risk. I hope some one else will be 
nominated." 



3 i8 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Colonel Higginson was required to do more or less 
stump-speaking in this campaign and wrote : — 

"Nov. 6. Election Day. . . . Globe reporter sur- 
prised to find me quietly reading and said that all the 
other candidates were in rooms at hotels with news- 
papers, telegraphers, and tables of figures. 

" Nov. 7. Learned news of defeat by the morning 
paper — felt political but not much personal regret, 
as I have never supposed I should like the life and 
there is plenty besides to be done." 

About the result of the election, he told his sister: — r 

"I don't doubt that many who at first meant to 
vote for me decided at last to stick by their party; 
and this is not strange, as one vote may determine 
the majority in the House. . . . The defection of the 
colored people's Club in Boston at the last moment 
was rather unexpected. ... But on the whole the 
Irish- Americans stood by me well and so did some 
of the colored people. . . . M. volunteered the use of 
Dapple [a small Shetland pony] all day yesterday for 
bringing up voters." 

In another letter to his brother-in-law he re- 
ported : — 

"The Election was really on pretty strict party 
lines. ... I don't feel that I have wasted time and 
strength; it has done me no apparent harm and 
made me feel that I am younger and stronger than 
I thought . . . the morning disappointment already 
seems a good way off. Margaret dances about and 
says, 'O papa, I'm so glad you are not elected." 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 319 

Restored to the quiet of his study, he edited, with 
his friend Mrs. Ella H. Bigelow, a volume of " Amer- 
ican Sonnets"; in 1888, wrote his book " Travellers 
and Outlaws"; and on New Year's Day, 1889, the 
diary recorded : " Looking forward also to my volume 
of poems, the fulfilled dream of a life " ; and soon adds : 
"Translated two Camoens sonnets and revised 
Riickert's ' Cradle Song' and got them into volume." 
This was his first volume of verse and was called " An 
Afternoon Landscape." A little later, he writes: — 

11 Jan. 29. At printing office — last proofs. I shall 
miss the fine and delicate pleasure of revising these 
verses — the flower of my life; a sort of witchhazel." 

When a summons came from the Governor in 
June, 1889, to appear at the State House, Colonel 
Higginson supposed that the interview would relate 
to the controversy on parochial schools, but instead 
he was offered the post of military historian. This 
offer he at first declined, but being urged to consider 
it, he decided a few days later to accept. November 
saw him fairly launched in this new literary enter- 
prise, and he wrote to his sister: — 

11 ... I see that I must be very careful and as I 
now have Margaret in full force upon me (' Papa, 
I am going to take good sound care of you/) I 
shall probably be protected. She requires me to go 
to bed early. ... I am quite free from extra engage- 



320 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

ments and cares and shall keep so for the history's 
sake." 

While engaged on this complicated undertaking, 
which continued for seven years, Colonel Higginson 
was very active in civic service. For fourteen years 
he was one of the hard-working trustees of the Cam- 
bridge Public Library, and as a representative mem- 
ber of the Citizens' Committee was in frequent com- 
munication with Governor Russell and Mr. F. H. 
Rindge, of California, in reference to the public gifts 
of the latter to the city of Cambridge (1888). Mr. 
Richard H. Dana has called attention to the fact 
that when petitions or documents relating to public 
movements were brought to Colonel Higginson to 
endorse, he always carefully considered them and 
asked searching questions before giving the influence 
of his name. This scrutiny often resulted, not only 
in important changes in the text of such papers, but 
in an entirely different way of presenting the scheme. 
When Margaret was eight years old, we spent the 
summer at East Gloucester. Here Colonel Higginson 
bought a fisherman's dory and taught the little girl 
to row. These notes are taken from his diary of that 
summer (1889) : — 

"July 6. p.m. ... to Gloucester and bought 
things for boat, and then rowed over — enjoying it 
as much as thirty years ago at Pigeon Cove. 



RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE 321 

"July 13. Dr. Rogers here, our first meeting for 
some ten years; enjoyed seeing him, but felt some- 
thing of that ' secret pain ' described in Longfellow's 
1 Driftwood Fire. ' . . . p.m. rowed to Gloucester and 
back against wind and sea . . . the best pull I have 
had for years. 

"July 28. Rowed to Gloucester and Ten Pound 
Island — finding the descendants of Francis Higgin- 
son's 'sweet single rose. ,,, 

In October Margaret went home before her father, 
and he thus described a day without her : — 

"The day seemed a concentrated solitude and par- 
tial death without Margaret and every little starfish 
and sea urchin she scattered seemed a part of her and 
too sacred to be touched. It brought home with ter- 
rible vividness the possible desolation of a life with- 
out her, and by sympathy, more remotely, the blow 
that it will be to her ardent nature on that day when 
she must lose me. That is the only drawback on 
a long delayed parentage — that one cannot as in 
youth look forward to a long lifetime within reach of 
a child. For me it may be something that I shall not 
live to see her with gray hairs — but for her — The 
more need to love each other while we can." 






XV 

JOURNEYS 

" Do you know that I am going to England? " wrote 
Colonel Higginson to a friend in April, 1872. " I look 
forward to it with boyish delight. ... I have got my 
best sympathy so far out of the Hawthornes' book — 
Mr. and Mrs. — her accounts are delicious I think, 
as eloquent as possible, and they make me so long to 
see a cathedral and its close, those green homes of 
peace, but it is queer that neither describes a night- 
ingale or a skylark — my first desiderata." 

This brief foreign trip included a hurried visit to 
Ireland, Scotland, and the Continent. In Dublin, 
the traveller went to see R. D. Webb, an old Aboli- 
tionist, who received him with delight, and he visited 
the house " where Moore was born and lived — still 
a grocery and wineshop such as his father kept. . . . 
This was my first shrine such as it was and I found it 
easy to conjure up the little sweet singer." 

A few days later in the " midst of the wonder and 
thrill" of London, he exclaimed: — 

" I feel as if I had just been born. ... I do not see 
how there can be a place in the world more delightful 
than London for one who loves both study and so- 



JOURNEYS 323 

ciety. ... I am having the most amazing time, per- 
fectly overwhelmed with invitations and kindnesses. 
After the above I will add that I breakfast with 
Froude Monday." 

At the Athenaeum Club he found Aubrey de Vere, 
"my first author. He came gliding downstairs to me 
a tall, refined, ascetic-looking man . . . and seemed 
and talked like a simple, sweet recluse." It may here 
be added that Colonel Higginson spent his first hours 
in London by gratifying his curiosity to see certain 
regions he had long known by reputation, and which 
were usually considered unsafe for visitors. When he 
walked through the Seven Dials and St. Giles — 
then called the "Den of Thieves" — he was unmo- 
lested and perhaps a shade disappointed to find all 
London apparently safe. A certain English corre- 
spondent of a New York paper gave exaggerated ac- 
counts of these rambles and declared that Colonel 
Higginson was "protected by his rashness." 

In his book called "Carlyle's Laugh" the Ameri- 
can author has described a memorable walk which 
he took in Hyde Park with Froude and Carlyle. " I 
wished," he wrote home, "we could all be photo- 
graphed. . . . We three were nearly run over in 
crossing the tide [Rotten Row] and dear old Carlyle 
had to run for life. I am so glad to have seen him — 
he was charming." Not long after, he dined with 



324 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Darwin at his home, which he described in his let- 
ters as "enlawned." 

"Soon enter the philosopher, taller than I, erect, 
white-bearded, like a kindlier Bryant, looking like 
his photograph, but more human and sweet — he 
was most genial, slight as was my claim on him . . . 
he seemed even a greater man than I had thought 
him." 

The daily record goes on : — 

"Heard Tyndall at Royal Institute and saw him 
afterwards — delightful man — asked me to dine 
with him. ... I sat between Tyndall and one whom 
I supposed a physician but found to be Lord Lyttle- 
ton. I remembered luckily a pretty Latin translation 
by him of a poem of Lord Houghton's and spoke of 
it. ... I think the ease with which one steps into 
a round only too delightful here is amazing. . . . 
Heard Bradlaugh the great popular orator of Eng- 
land . . . who came and took lunch with me. 

"June 5. Met Mr. Gladstone by appointment at 
12 — a fine wise keen face, voice like Emerson's with- 
out the hesitancy — we talked America and literature 
and he heard for the first time that his Juventus 
Mundi was reprinted. He asked me to breakfast for 
Thursday next, but impossible." 

The same day he met Huxley whom he described 
as "shortish, strong, black-bearded, with blacking- 
brush style of hair, looks like a scientific shoemaker, 
but talks to the point." 



JOURNEYS 325 

From Oxford he wrote : — 

"Bryce soon came in for me to go and hear Dean 
Stanley — it was a special service at the Univ. 
church and the ' Heads of houses ' (or colleges) went 
in procession, with scarlet gowns, and men bearing 
maces before them. . . . He is a little man, somewhat 
like Dr. Palfrey, face keener, and a peculiar intoning 
manner as he preaches, looking up to the sky every 
few minutes, but never at his hearers." 

At another time when Colonel Higginson heard 
Dean Stanley officiate at Westminster Abbey, he 
said : — 

"Dean Stanley looked old and mediaeval, with a 
black velvet cap on, and wearing the red ribbon and 
jewel of the Bath, of which he is a sort of Chaplain." 

"Everything was done for me at Oxford," the re- 
cord continues, "by Bryce, the indefatigable, and 
Dicey; and I made a speech at a great college dinner 
and again at a students' supper where I was at first 
introduced as a Confederate officer, but I got round 
it." This little episode was referred to by Mr. 
Bryce in a letter to Colonel Higginson, dated 1907 : — 

"Do you remember being with Dicey and myself 
at a Sunday dinner in Trinity College, Oxford . . . 
where you saved a perilous situation with a swift de- 
cision worthy of your military experience? One of 
the dons had fancied you were a Confederate 
officer!" 



326 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

In Oxford, also, Colonel Higginson saw Freeman, the 
historian, Rawlinson, Montague Bernard, "the late 
'High Joint,'" and Miss Thackeray, the novelist, 
"by far the most original and interesting woman I 
have seen in England. She pressed on me a letter to 
Tennyson and I expect to go to see him." This visit 
to the poet at the Isle of Wight is minutely de- 
scribed in "Cheerful Yesterdays," and from the let- 
ters only this extract is taken : — 

* ' Presently I heard a clamping step and in walked 
rather heavily and awkwardly a man, the most sin- 
gular compound of Sam Johnson and Professor 
Lovering . . . fine eyes under spectacles! . . . He 
was quite pleasant though never exactly interesting 
or agreeable, took me to his smoking room to the top 
of the house, through some lovely gardens full of 
roses, then to see Mrs. Cameron his neighbor and 
crony [the amateur photographer]." 

During his stay in London, Colonel Higginson 
preached for Mr. Conway at South Place Chapel 
(Unitarian). This sermon was reviewed in an Eng- 
lish paper under the title "A Warrior in the Pulpit." 
The author of the article said some anxiety was felt 
lest Colonel Higginson, whom he described as "gen- 
tle in speech and manner as Colonel Newcome in so- 
ciety," would fail as an effective speaker. These 
fears were speedily dispelled, for the English writer 



JOURNEYS 327 

exclaimed, "Some of his sentences were on fire!" A 
London paper spoke of the evident delight this Amer- 
ican traveller found in England, adding, "Even the 
climate, he, like most Americans, does not de- 
nounce!" 

Before sailing for home, Higginson was given 
a farewell entertainment by the Anglo-American 
Association. At this meeting, of which Thomas 
Hughes was president, a letter was read from Profes- 
sor Tyndall, saying, "The Association desire to ex- 
press to Colonel Higginson their sense of the services 
he has rendered to the cause of human freedom, and 
to wish him God speed as an unofficial messenger of 
peace between two nations." The last clause re- 
ferred to the fact that there were then certain treaty 
complications between the two countries. 

In the spring of 1878, Colonel Higginson made a 
second visit to Europe. He wrote from the steamer: 

"When I sailed before I felt a sort of dismay as we 
left the wharf as if the experiment were wildly dan- 
gerous and I had better jump ashore; now I did not 
feel that, only that fear of having left something es- 
sential behind which we often have on setting out 
for journeys. ... I found with regret that I could 
not look on the Irish hills with quite the intense de- 
light they inspired when they were my first glimpse 
of Europe." 

Arrived again in London, in May, he writes: — 



328 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"Went to see Prof. Masson at the Athenaeum 
Club and found that I am admitted as a guest 
through [Sir Frederick] Pollock and Hughes. It is 
a great satisfaction and honor. ... As we went 
through the hall the Archbishop of Canterbury was 
coming down stairs, Sir Henry Maine, the author 
was coming from the smoking room, and the three 
men in the smoking room were Gal ton, Palgrave and 
the editor of the Quarterly Review. No building in 
the world has so many eminent men within its walls 
from 4 to 6 daily." 

Then he records meeting at the Cosmopolitan 
Club, Anthony Trollope, Lord Houghton, whom he 
knew before, "brisk, small, and chatty " ; and of hav- 
ing "a talk with Gal ton, author of 'Hereditary 
Genius." ' 

"Heard a lecture from Max Miiller at the Chapter 
House of Westminster Abbey. Afterwards I went up 
to speak to him and found him as pleasant as possi- 
ble. He remembered at once my ' Sympathy of Re- 
ligions ' which I had sent him and begged me to 
-come to Oxford and see him. He looks quite English 
in style, but has a sweet sunny manner and slight 
German accent, about as much of both as Agassiz." 

Colonel Higginson had been appointed a delegate 
to a Prison Reform Convention at Stockholm, and of 
a preparatory English meeting in May he said : — 

"The one interesting person was Cardinal Man- 
ning — such a prepossessing and distinguished man, 



JOURNEYS 329 

the very ideal of an ecclesiastic — tall, spare, with 
noble head above and narrowing to a keen ascetic 
jaw — eyes and mouth full of mobility and sensi- 
tiveness, the most winning voice and manner, as 
much American as English, and speaking so nobly 
and sweetly and humanly. I never felt more the 
power of the Roman Catholic Church than in seeing 
how it evolves its man and keeps the type. 

"May 18. I went to a reception at Mr. Marti- 
neau's (James) chiefly his students and parishioners. 
... It was rather stiffish and the person I liked best 
was a very pleasing young Professor, Knight of St. 
Andrew's (Scotland) who to my surprise had my 
Epictetus and knew all about it. 

"To the interesting trial of Mrs. Besant's claim to 
her child — a case between a Christian husband 
(clergyman) and an atheist wife, to be tried before a 
Jewish magistrate on the Jewish Sabbath. ... It 
was strange waiting in the Court and seeing the 
wigged barristers come in. Conway says the wig is a 
survival of the patriarchal idea of seniority, to give a 
symbolical age to all concerned in administering jus- 
tice. Several cases came first and I was struck with 
the conversational tone between judge and counsel 
(no jury) and the weight and clearness of the judg- 
ment. Mrs. Besant sat patiently, a very fine looking 
young woman of 28 with a strong sweet face. . . . 
The husband's lawyer treated her very courteously 
and made no personal imputation or allusion, but 
claimed the child for the husband because of her 
avowed atheism and her publication of books which 
had been condemned. The second lawyer was more 



33Q THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

vehement, but not discourteous. She argued her 
own case, in opposition to the judge's advice, and he 
often interrupted her but not discourteously. She 
appeared admirably and took his interruptions very 
sweetly. She is tall and fair and with great ease and 
clearness of speech, but the effect was marred by 
Bradlaugh's standing behind her, his face being un- 
prepossessing though intellectual. . . . She admitted 
all the facts very gently but explained that she had 
simply abstained from biasing the child's mind, 
thinking that all religious opinions should be post- 
poned. She made some weak points but on the 
whole was strong, but the judge ruled strongly 
against her, though admitting her personal charac- 
ter. . . . After the decision the Court adjourned. 
The Con ways and I spoke to her ; I told her I did not 
agree with her in some things but could not but re- 
spect her and feel for her and she took it with sweet- 
ness and dignity. A few people waited, about 30 per- 
haps ; several applauded and one or two hissed as she 
walked away with Bradlaugh. . . . 

" Afterwards went by invitation to a meeting of 
the society for opening galleries on Sunday, a large 
fine meeting in the great hall of the Freemasons' 
Tavern. The young Earl of Rosebery presided, he 
who married the Rothschild, a good-looking smooth- 
faced youth and a very pleasing speaker, frank and 
witty, evidently a great favorite and very inde- 
pendent. He said once that he thought the majority 
should govern, which was applauded. I should say 
he has a future before him, though they say both 
families bitterly opposed the marriage. ... I was 



JOURNEYS 331 

called on late and introduced as from the United 
States and very warmly received; could not go on 
for some time. 

"An evening meeting of Woman Suffrage in Lon- 
don — really good and sensible speaking — Mrs. 
Fawcett, Miss Beeker, and others, several members 
of Parliament, but no one of rank as at other meet- 
ings. ... I was asked for the 3rd time to make or 
second the vote of thanks to the chairman — an in- 
evitable English formality; and I spoke briefly. 

14 1 am struck," he wrote, "with the multiplicity of 
societies and movements here for all sorts of odd 
things. For instance I have just got a note from a 
total stranger, inviting me to the platform of a meet- 
ing of the society to resist compulsory vaccination 
by the state! . . . Now as I never even heard of 
An ti- Vaccination I am rather bewildered, and at any 
rate can't go. 

"I talked to pretty Mrs. H. who knows the pre- 
Raphaelite people and confirmed my impression of 
a very false and artificial vein among them. She 
knows a set of artists who rendezvous at Hampstead 
Heath and every evening dress in costumes of the 
last century and try to get away from the common- 
place present; they go so far as to have numbers of 
Addision's Spectator reprinted with modern dates so 
as to keep up the atmosphere of Queen Anne's day. 
This was almost past believing. She knows Burne- 
Jones well and says he is a very simple person. 

"Dined with the Edwin Arnolds. . . . She was 
Fanny Channing, a tall, elegant, attractive woman 
and a most adoring wife of a loving husband. There 



332 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

is something un-English about Arnold, perhaps from 
his long life in the East and his poetic nature. He is 
delightful when not talking politics, but there he is so 
vehement as to be a little fatiguing though always in 
a gentle, graceful way. He is a small man with a 
pleasing face. . . . He is somewhat egotistic about the 
Telegraph which has brought all England round to it 
he thinks and perhaps it is true — says ' The Empire 
of Russia is an anachronism which I hope to de- 
stroy.' He claims to be liberal and even radical, but 
thinks the thing now to be done is to save the colo- 
nial empire which only Beaconsfield can do. He 
thinks that Beaconsfield is not selfish, or vain in a 
petty way, but 'has a sublime self confidence and 
thinks he (B.) alone can save this nation of stupid 
snub-nosed Englishmen ' — and A. seems to think 
the same of Beaconsfield's policy. To save the Brit- 
ish Empire from the Russians is to Arnold like sav- 
ing Rome from the Gauls. Arnold the other day 
came upon that poem ' He who died at Azan,' read it 
with delight and finally remembered that he wrote it 
himself in youth. . . . She (Fanny) showed me his 
'Star of India' with pride; but her children with as 
much [pride]. 

"Found General Higginson and Henry H. waiting 
to go to the Guards' Review for Queen's birthday, 
'Trooping the colors,' as it is called. There was a 
great crowd outside, but all the sentries were defer- 
ential to Gen. H. their late commander, and he got us 
a fine place, which he defended against noblemen and 
ladies for our sake. Henry is as delighted with him 



JOURNEYS 333 

as I and says, 'He's the best Higginson I've seen 
yet/ The review was wonderfully beautiful — the 
3 guard regiments (Grenadiers, Coldstreams, and 
Fusileers) being considered by Englishmen the finest 
regiments in the world and their officers ranking 
above all others of the same grade. Gen. H. was 
Colonel of the Grenadiers and commanded the whole 
brigade till his promotion as Major-General, and he 
hopes to command it again. The parade was before 
the Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief, with 
whom was the Prince Royal of Prussia, a very hand- 
some blonde soldierly German, in beautiful white 
uniform. With them rode many others of high rank. 
. . . The mounted bugle corps wears the picturesque 
uniform of Charles IPs day — black velvet caps and 
heavy gold lace coats. All around the open square 
the houses were covered with people, and all un- 
covered at God save the Queen. Of course there were 
showers but nobody minded that. After review the 
Gen. said 'our only chance for the music at St. 
James' Palace will be to keep close by these fellows' 
— so he, Henry and I marched rapidly between the 
ranks of the magnificent guards, keeping close to an 
officer he knew and just clearing the edge of the 
crowd, who pressed close to us. It was deliciously 
amusing to me — the audacity of the thing — Gen. 
H. striding on, out of uniform, but of distinguished 
bearing, then I behind him, and Henry H. behind 
me trying to look as if we had a right there which 
sometimes the mob at our side seemed seriously to 
doubt. However, we got inside the Palace gates, 
heard some more fine music and then Henry and I 



334 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

took our leave of our gallant kinsman, who for the 
sake of a tie of blood 250 years old had thus given us 
the position of temporary Guardsmen — in England 
a very high title." 

The latter part of May he went to Beckenham, 
"to dine and sleep at Mr. Darwin's. . . . Oh! the 
beauty of Darwin's grounds, just a window looking 
on a few flower pots for the foreground, but so ex- 
quisitely arranged, such bright colors heaped to- 
gether with a thicket of rhododendrons for a back- 
ground and a straight path leading away under 
trees, I never grew tired of it. Mr. Darwin looks 
older and weaker than when I saw him 6 years ago, 
less distinguished and commanding, but always 
kindly and noble. Mrs. Darwin stouter and also 
kind and intelligent — two younger sons at home. 
... I was assigned to a large room looking on the 
lovely flower-beds . . . inside an old-fashioned 4- post 
bed of the largest size with curtains and feather bed. 
To my dismay the servant had unpacked my small 
bag and neatly laid its hastily assorted contents on 
the dressing table. I do hate this waiting upon. . . . 
Mr. Darwin has a great desire to come to America, 
but never will, because of the voyage. 

"Lunched with Miss Anna Swanwich the trans- 
lator of ^schylus, with F. W. Newman translator of 
Homer, a quaint small long-faced man, with an 
American look. Afterwards went to meet Browning 
at the Athenaeum Club — one of the desires of my 
former visit, unfulfilled then." 

Of this meeting, which is fully described in 
"Cheerful Yesterdays," Colonel Higginson said that 



JOURNEYS 335 

Browning "was very cordial, yet I felt it more the 
general temperament of the man than from any per- 
sonal interest. 

"Then I went into a Cooperative meeting for a 
while — working men, who all dropped their H's, 
but spoke much to the point. . . . Later, I walked 
through Pall Mall, all illuminated for the Queen's 
birthday, and crowded with people. ... I saw one 
fight and stopped it to the displeasure of the crowd 
so I decided not to interfere any more. . . . 

11 1 saw Herbert Spencer. He was playing billiards 
as he does every afternoon. Prof. Bain introduced 
me and he went back to his game, apologizing, but 
afterwards came to me in the library and we had 
some talk. I liked him better than I had been told I 
should. He looks like his pictures and like a Uni- 
tarian minister. He is rather small, with large head, 
bald forehead and spectacles, bad figure and walks 
awkwardly, manner quite pleasant and cordial with a 
little that effect of whim and isolation more common 
with Englishmen than with us. He said billiards were 
of great value to him as his only recreation and 
form of activity, and spoke of the great danger of 
overwork to all. He seemed to have the common im- 
pression (English) that there is less freedom of 
thought in America than here, which seems to me 
quite untrue. He thought any seeming shrinking on 
the part of Tyndall and Huxley due to their wives' 
influence, the only thing he said reflecting on wo- 
men, nor was he cynical as I had heard. He seemed 
pleased at the reception of his books in the United 
States, but said he should never go there as he could 



336 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

not stand the loss of sleep in the voyage, which 
seemed to me a queer view. I have always felt in- 
credulous as to his being a really great man and this 
interview did not remove it, but I liked him more 
than I expected. . . . 

" Found Justin McCarthy and his pleasant wife 
and children at home, real Irish hospitality. ... It 
was after 12 and they had just come down to break- 
fast. He and his son both work for morning papers 
and are up late. Then appeared at the door a great 
cheery handsome ruddy face with a mass of light 
gray hair standing out wildly all about it — this was 
Mrs. M. They are much with all the literary people, 
Rossettis,etc, and confirmed what I had heard that 
there is a strong reaction against Dickens — it is 
not the thing to admire him, his subjects are thought 
commonplace and his sentiments forced. Walt Whit- 
man among their set is the American poet ; the taste 
for Miller has passed by and though he is here his 
poetry is forgotten. He was thought original and 
characteristic and when he came to parties with 
trousers thrust in his boots, he was thought the only 
American who dared do in England as he would 
do at home. Whittier was unknown they said, and 
Lowell only through the 'Biglow Papers.' Swin- 
burne calls him no poet but a critic who tries to 
write poetry. 

11 (13-14 June) I spent in Conway's Convention 
which was very interesting and called out strong 
character and ready speaking. I was on the commit- 
tee too to draft the Constitution which differs some- 
what from our Free Religious Association (as does 



1. 



JOURNEYS 337 

the name 'Association of Liberal Thinkers'). The 
best known people in it were Voysey (a small and 
narrow soul who got alarmed and withdrew), Leslie 
Stephen (who married Miss Thackeray), Stuart 
Glennie (who wrote the account of Buckle's East- 
ern travels), G. J. Holyoke (veteran radical), Mr. 
Blyden of Liberia (black and Mohammedan who 
has written on that subject in Fraser), Mrs. Rose 
(formerly of N.Y.), A. J. Eyres the philologist, and 
various Unitarian ministers. I spoke several times 
and twice succeeded in allaying incipient contests by 
suggesting phrases that reconciled different opinions, 
so that one speaker proposed to send me as arbi- 
trator to reconcile the strikes now going on at the 
North, and they all laughed and applauded." 

In June Colonel Higginson was in Oxford on 
Commemoration Day and lunched with "the new 
D.C.L's and their wives and other notabilities, a 
grand affair in the beautiful hall of All Souls College. 
I sat between Bryce and Mrs. Spottiswode, wife of 
one of the new D.C.L's, and opposite a young Lord 
Donoughmore, whose name delighted me because I 
thought of the statues of 

1 Haythen goddesses most rare 
Homer, Venus and Nebuchadnezzar 
All standing naked in the open air.* 

The song says of them farther that they are 'all 
second cousin to My Lord Donoughmore' and here 
was the real youth." 

Here he met Dr. Pattison, author of "Essays and 
Reviews," who "spoke warmly to me of 'Atlantic 



338 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Essays ' which he got in consequence of an extract in 
a review. He said, 'You must have given great at- 
tention to the matter of style'; and afterwards, 'Do 
you find an audience in America for such critical 
refinement of style? I fear there would hardly be in 
England/ I told him I thought Americans when 
well educated cared more for refinement of style than 
English and he said he knew they formerly did but 
thought their style had grown more 'rough and 
ready* as the English certainly had. He quoted one 
or two of my stories and said he had often repeated 
them. . . . 

"Waked early with regret from my last night in 
College. I can't imagine anything more rejuvenat- 
ing than the way these men come back here and en- 
ter, as of right, on their old privileges. H for in- 
stance still has a right here as A.M. and can come 
back and claim a parlor and bedroom for these days 
if any one is vacant, and be served from the kitchen 
paying only very moderate fees. We have nothing 
like it. College is with us a passing experience — for 
■them a lifelong home." 

Scotland came next and he reported: — 

"Going North I had for companion the Professor 
of Poetry of yesterday, Principal Sharp of St. An- 
drews, whose books have been printed in America, 
' Poetic Interpretation of Nature,' etc. — he is a thin 
Scotch looking man, recalling Eliot Cabot. I did not 
at first fancy some things about him but about the 
time we crossed the border we got acquainted. He 
soon said, ' Did you ever hear of Yarrow?' I could 



JOURNEYS $39 

hardly help laughing and . . . told him every edu- 
cated American knew every place mentioned in 
Scott, Burns or the Border Minstrelsy. 

''July 2. Edinburgh. Had a delightful trip by 
coach to Roslin. Nobody can be disappointed in 
Roslin Chapel. ... I longed for hours of peace 
there. 

"July 3. Dined with the Massons — his talk 
about Edinburgh was very interesting. He came 
here to the University from Aberdeen and says that 
three of the professors, Wilson (Chr. North) Chal- 
mers and Sir Wm. Hamilton were the three most 
striking men in appearance that he ever saw. 
Wilson's hair was yellow, Chalmers's white and 
Hamilton's very dark — Wilson was a giant, and his 
statue does not exaggerate his lion like port; Chal- 
mers's face was large and heavy and seamed — he 
had but little book knowledge but wonderful origi- 
nality and power. Hamilton had great hold upon 
young men collectively though not individually. 
When Dickens first came here, Wilson said of him 
'How could that puppy have written such books.' 
Masson says Dickens' imagination was so active his 
narratives had very little value. . . . The Massons 
knew Alexander Smith and Sydney Dobell the two 
young poets, both of whom have died and both inter- 
ested me. ... I praised Dobell's ballad of 'Ravel- 
ston' so much that Mrs. M. ordered a carriage and 
drove me there in the dark leaving at 9 and returning 
at 11. . . . The house is quaint and old and is the 
original Tully-Veolan of Waverley — Scott used to 
go there as a boy. . . . Dobell used to pass the house 



340 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

daily almost and the ballad wrote itself I suppose — 
but the Massons did not know it and it seemed 
so strange and weird that an American from afar 
should go wandering about the old place, for the love 
of a ballad which perhaps the Keiths of Ravelston do 
not know." 

Returning to London in July, he went "to a 
charming garden party. . . . The company was distin- 
guished — Huxley, Spencer, Galton, my friend and 
reader Mark Pattison from Oxford, Sir Rutherford 
Alcock, Walter Crane and his wife and others. . . . 
Huxley . . . was very cordial. . . . Walter Crane is 
quite a young man, modest and retiring and has a 
nice young wife of the same stamp who seemed 
pleased at hearing how well he was known in 
America. . . . 

11 In the evening went to meet a few Women Suf- 
frage people and Mrs. Livermore at Peter Taylor's 
M.P. — the author. ... I saw people there who are 
quite American in their sympathies — Miss Helen 
Taylor, Mill's adopted daughter, being most inter- 
esting and more French than English in the grace 
and sweetness of her manners.' ' 

At the Voltaire Centenary in Paris, Colonel Hig- 
ginson heard Victor Hugo speak and was much 
struck with the storm of enthusiasm which greeted 
him. Another interesting event of this visit to 
France was a fortunate meeting with Tourguenieff ; 
and he found Louis Blanc "a most delightful little 
man." His impressions of these distinguished men 



JOURNEYS 341 

are preserved in "Cheerful Yesterdays.' ' At a 
French Prison Reform meeting he found he "could 
get on in the general French Committee work well 
enough, but as for two excited Frenchmen talking to 
one another, it is like interpreting heat lightning." 
But Colonel Higginson had a natural aptitude for 
acquiring languages, and on his first arrival at Paris 
he wrote: "French came to me like a flash and I 
interpreted for stray Englishmen at the custom- 
house ! ' ' During this second visit he strolled into the 
suburbs of Paris and walked from Sceaux to Chate- 
nay, and "bought vin ordinaire in the very room 
where Voltaire was born." 

To continue the extracts : — 

"Paris, Monday, July 22. I dined at Mr. Hitt's 
(American Sec'y of Legation) to meet Stanley the 
explorer. ... I sat next to Stanley who is a very queer 
combination — much smoothed and softened they 
say but a Herald reporter still — not of distin- 
guished look but with a resolute air — accent neither 
English, American nor French — talks of course 
about himself mainly but not in a specially conceited 
way — and seems perfectly incapable of a joke. . . . 
He gave an amusing description of his intense de- 
light at finding the queer little old man [Livingstone] 
but as the natives were all looking on they repressed 
it all and he and Dr. L. met as if in Piccadilly, per- 
fectly coldly. Then he went on to complain and 



342 THOMAS' WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

scold most tediously at the way he was disbelieved 
and attacked and finally advised everybody not to go 
to Africa. When the only Englishman present pro- 
tested against what Stanley had said, the latter re- 
plied : ' What I complain of in the English is that 
they got my girl away from me,' at which nobody 
could help laughing — it seems that his betrothed 
was convinced that the first Livingstone letters were 
forgeries and so dropped him. . . . Afterwards I had 
an almost equally amusing scene with one of the 
American jurors, who said, 'I am glad to meet you, 
Col. H., I have been so interested with what you 
have accomplished in New Caledonia; your name has 
often been before us in the jury of honor.' I knew as 
much of New Caledonia as Stanley at first of Living- 
stone, but recalled some English Higginson who had 
been in the papers as connected with copper mines 
there and it seems he is called Colonel too. What a 
chaos of Colonels! I said if it was necessary to pa- 
triotism that I should take the credit, I'd do my 
best/' 

Of his further doings in the French capital, he 

wrote : — 

' ' This was the day of the l Congres Internationel de 
Droit des Femmes. , . . . Mrs. Howe read a paper in 
French . . . the language seemed to give a clearness 
and precision to her ideas and kept her from the 
clouds and she read with much dignity and sweet- 
ness.' ' 

At the Theatre Francais he "for the first time 
saw acting! . . . Sarah Bernhardt seemed the legiti- 



JOURNEYS 343 

mate successor of Rachel and Ristori — a blonde 
Rachel, tall and slender and stately and fearfully ill 
like her — but oh ! such power, such expression by 
a glance, a whisper, a motion of the hand and such 
utter absence of the visibly histrionic." 

Normandy was the next country to be visited, and 
there Colonel Higginson stayed with friends, going 
thence to Germany. 

"Le Manier, Penne de Pie near Honfleur, Nor- 
mandy. Here I am at this perfectly charming place 
. . . wonderfully silent and deep, and delightful after 
Paris, and it was pleasant to go to sleep and not 
know what the morning would reveal. 

1 ' I was waked by the bells for early mass in the old 
church opposite, 800 years old. My windows look 
upon the sea. . . . Once a day an old man comes 
with the mail, and once a day the omnibus goes by 
each way between Honfleur and Trouville, — that 
is all. 

" I got here this morning," he wrote from Cologne, 
1 ' leaving beautiful Normandy and dear friends with 
difficulty. ... I shall not feel solitary on the Rhine, 
having Bettine's correspondence with me and mean- 
ing to visit some of her places." 

Apropos of Bettine, these passages occur in one of 
the diaries : — 

"Just now I am reading Glinderode with ever-new 
delight : I wish there were a million volumes. Really 
there is not an author in the world, save Emerson 



344 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

and Shakespeare, from whom I have had so much 
and so fresh enjoyment as from the perennial Child, 
Bettine. Her effervescence always intoxicates me 
with delight; though her life flowed prematurely 
away in it, like champagne left uncorked. 

"Bingen, Aug. 7. Hard at work on the castles 
with intervals of my dear Bettine Brentano on whose 
tracks I now am. . . . My main object just here is 
Bettine and I made a long dreamed of pilgrimage to 
her best loved haunt, whence many of her letters 
were written, the ruined chapel of St. Roch. ... I 
found with dismay that the beautiful little ruin 
which Bettine describes as recently destroyed has 
been rebuilt but what was my delight to go round it 
and find a little ruin of two arches and a wall still 
remaining, with an altar and a stone crucifix, grim 
and battered, apparently the very one up which she 
climbed to stick a bunch of wild flowers in the top. 
I could have done the same in continuing her work 
for there were harebells like ours and heather in 
bloom all around, but just as I sprang down, a fair 
young priest such as she would have rejoiced in came 
reading his breviary round the corner and it was well 
to be discreet. He also cooled my ardor a little by 
saying that this little ruin was of a second chapel to 
St. Michael which also stood there — still I dare 
say it was the same crucifix. She used to write to 
Goethe there and kept his letters buried there and 
has an exquisite description of going to sleep there in 
the moonlight on the wall and having to sleep there 
all night. She planted grapevines and honeysuckle 
and lilies there and she says 'all sorts of plants,' but 






JOURNEYS 345 

there were only some ivy roots of which I took one 
and shall try to make it grow. 

"Aug. 8. From Bingen to Frankfort. O, what a 
charming day! wandering along the Rhine with 
Bettine in my hand, studying out all the scenes of 
the letters I have always enjoyed so much. First I 
crossed by ferry to Rudesheim and tried to fix the 
spot where Giinderode was found dead. . . . Bettine 
landed at Rudesheim that day and ran straight up 
Ostein, a mountain a mile high she says. ... I went 
up the same hill. It is a steep paved vineyard path. 
The valley was utterly still and bathed in heat, it 
seemed, as B. writes elsewhere, as if the leagues of 
ripening grapes sent up an incense. Along the path 
grew yarrow, tanzy and succory, just as in New Eng- 
land; the present emperor loves succory flowers 
especially and they always bring him bunches of it 
on public days. ... At two I went on by train to 
Winkel — Bettine's regular summer home. ... I 
staid long on the shore [of the Rhine] and the nearly 
70 years since 1809 seemed nothing — the two girls 
were still young to me. I think I found the place 
where Giinderode died. ... I walked back through 
the long villages again. It was very hot. I had an 
hour at the station and lay down on a bench and 
slept as Bettine would have done. ... It is such a 
delight to have an ideal object, especially in travel- 
ling alone. 

"Aug. 9. Frankfort. Here still was Bettine, but 
lost in the greater stream of Goethe. The Goethe 
house was my chief interest. . . . Below were his 
magnificent mother's rooms . . . portraits of her ... in 



346 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

the very room where she used to sit and chat with 
Bettine and they were (as the latter says) the only 
two people alive in Frankfort or anywhere else." 

At Nuremberg he saw Albert Diirer's house, 
scene of "The Artist's Married Life," which inter- 
ested him profoundly; and at Dresden he "pene- 
trated into the holy of holies where the Sistine Ma- 
donna is. It quite fulfils the hopes I had fixed on 
that picture for so many years; and familiar as I was 
with the copies, it is really that event in my life that 
I imagined it to be. . . . The Sistine Madonna, [the] 
Venus of Milo — they really fulfil the ideal like 
cathedrals." 

After the traveller's return he wrote: — 

"The sojourner in a foreign country, while away 
from the safeguards of home has a peculiar feeling 
of safety in another sense — a sort of wall of defence 
around him in the fact of his own insignificance. To 
go among a people who know neither you nor your 
kin is like going about invisible, those who see you 
take no account of you, you are simply one stranger 
more, unimportant as a fly. When I look back on my 
life in Paris, I seem to have carried about with me a 
moving wall of seclusion, which is now exchanged for 
the glare of publicity." 

The following year, after his second marriage, 
Colonel Higginson received, through Professor Long- 



JOURNEYS 347 

fellow, this letter from members of Mr. Conway's 
parish, accompanied by fifty dollars: — 

"London, April 13, 1879. 
"Some few of us who retain a grateful recollec- 
tion of your presence amongst us last summer were 
glad of the opportunity your marriage afforded us to 
approach you with some slight offering of our regard, 
feeling quite sure that you would interpret aright the 
significance of the act. Whatever form the memento 
may take I trust, my dear Sir, it will ever speak to 
you of the disimprisoned spirits; and ever stimulate 
you to use your rare and noble gift of persuasive elo- 
quence in the cause of truth and freedom." 

Colonel Higginson went abroad twice more, in 
1897 and 1 90 1, on both of these occasions taking his 
family with him. From Tin tern, England, one of the 
party wrote : — 

"Wentworth is too soft-hearted to travel in Eu- 
rope. He has discovered great holes in the roofs of 
some of the cottages near us, and heard that one old 
woman has to put up an umbrella in the night when 
it rains, and this makes him unhappy." 

The 1897 visit brought us to London at the time of 
the Queen's Jubilee, and Colonel Higginson wrote : — 

"London seems so confoundedly empty to me 
without the circle of great men whom I met twenty 
years ago. . . . You can have no conception of the 
absolute absorption of everything in the forthcoming 



348 THOMAS WENfWORTH HIGGINSON 

Queen's festival or the millions of people who are 
pouring into the city." 

During his wanderings abroad, it was always as- 
sumed by strangers that Colonel Higginson was an 
Englishman. An Englishwoman said to him one day, 
"Then you have been in America?" and he replied, 
"Very much so." At another time a respectable 
housekeeper said to him, "Are you an American gen- 
tleman, sir? You don't speak like one. I should have 
taken you rather for English." He said, rather se- 
verely, " I suppose you mean that for a compliment, 
but I don't consider it one." " Ah," said she, " but 
you must admit they have a twang, a kind of accent- 
like." He said, "That's what we say of the Eng- 
lish " ; and she laughed. He wrote in his diary: — 

"We pick up lots of Americans we never heard of 
at home and learn a great deal that is new about 
our own country. . . . An Englishman watched me 
through a knot hole for some Americanism. Said he 
detected a good many in Holmes." 

One of his English friends, Rev. W. Garrett 
Horder, has written down for this memoir his im- 
pressions of Colonel Higginson. From an English 
point of view no praise could be higher: — 

" I think he was the tallest, most erect, most aris- 
tocratic in his bearing of any American we had 
known. While as to his speech, it was difficult to be- 
lieve that he had been born and lived all his days 



JOURNEYS 349 

across the Atlantic. ... But more important than 
his manner of speech was the spirit that expressed 
itself not only in his words but in his actions and 
bearing. I have never seen in any other man so per- 
fect a union of the most democratic (I use the word 
in our British sense) convictions and the most aristo- 
cratic bearing. That to me was the most striking 
feature, and one very, very rarely found." 

A memorial sermon was preached by this clergy- 
man after Colonel Higginson's death from the text, 
"A man shall be as an hiding place from the wind 
and a covert from the tempest/' and reported in the 
London " Times.' ' In this address Mr. Horder called 
his subject a " perfect English gentleman, adding 
thereto the freshness of the American." 

An interesting chance acquaintance was made at 
the South Kensington Museum, when the American 
author was examining the original manuscripts of 
Coleridge. He was talking with the custodian of 
these treasures about Hartley Coleridge and quot- 
ing his poems, when his listener suddenly remarked, 
" My name is Hartley Coleridge !" and explained that 
he was a grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This 
new and congenial friend was full of interesting anec- 
dotes about Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb. Higgin- 
son wrote : — 

11 July 20. Lunched with E. Hartley Coleridge at 
Oxford and Cambridge Club. . . . Coleridge does not 



350 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

recall his grandfather but [remembers] well his great 
aunt Mrs. Lloyd a most superior woman at 90, read- 
ing Horace, etc. His aunt Mrs. H. A. Coleridge 
quoted her uncle Southey a great deal. . . . He says 
we must go to Torquay where his sister Christobel 
(!) lives." 

To continue the extracts from the foreign journals 

and letters : — 

"London, July 27, 1897. 

"Yesterday I went to Parliament and heard a 
rousing debate on Africa by Chamberlain, Harcourt, 
Balfour, Hicks-Beach, Labouchere and the leaders 
generally; they hit quite as hard as our congressmen. 
To-day I am going to meet Swinburne. 

"Our reception at the Channings [Francis Chan- 
ning, M.P., now Lord Channing of Wellingborough] 
was a great success, two-thirds of the invited coming. 
The crowd in London was even worse than the day 
before and some people spent nearly two hours in 
their cabs, much of the time stopping perfectly still. 
Mrs. James Bryce gave up the attempt and went 
home. 

"At British Museum — Dr. Garnett a quaint per- 
son. Found almost all my books and even pamphlets 
there." 

The trip of 1897 included many delightful visits at 
English country-houses. One of these was at General 
Sir George Higginson's summer home on the Thames, 
where we saw the Henley regatta. In his description 
of this house, the American visitor said, "The high 



JOURNEYS 351 

hall was lined with old cuirasses and bayonets, the 
latter all picked up on the field of Inkerman, where 
Sir George, then a lieutenant, was engaged/' The 
hospitality of English houses was fully appreciated, 
but the formalities made Colonel Higginson a little 
impatient. He amused his family by reporting after 
a London luncheon that he had been "swamped in 
Lords and Ladies/' From Oxford he wrote: — 

"Great and prompt is the kindness of these Eng- 
lish people. Already invitations of some kind for al- 
most every day, before we have been here twenty- 
four hours. . . . The librarian of the great Bodleian 
library remembered me twenty-five years ago and 
says I ought to have had a degree of D.C.L. in place 
of some of the Colonial premiers." 

He spent a Sunday at Stratford and wrote: — 

"I went to Shakespeare's church, a lovely place, 
and there was a very ritualistic service, a great deal 
of signs of the cross, etc. The rector presently an- 
nounced that he would have a prayer service of 
thanks for an American party saved from danger at 
sea. After the service I was suddenly surrounded by 
American Librarians. It proved that they were the 
party, the Cephalonia having broken a shaft." 

And this is his family's account of that Sunday 
morning : — 

"Wentworth sat through the service unhappily, 
watching the people cross themselves, and then 



352 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

walked home between the bishop and vicar, each of 
them claiming him as an old acquaintance!!!" 

An annoying incident happened on our way to 
Stratford in the loss of luggage which prevented 
Colonel Higginson from attending a dinner given 
near London by the Omar Khayyam Club. There- 
upon an amusing squib appeared in the ''Morning 
Post" in which " incidents connected with the late 
Shah of Persia and the present Colonel Wentworth 
Higginson" figured. 

At Salisbury, he encountered a favorite novelist : — 

"This morning we discovered (through a tell-tale 
letter directed to him) that a man staying here was 
Thomas Hardy. Hardy is small with a keen thin 
face, head nearly bald and little gray moustache. He 
is very simple and pleasant, willing to talk about 
his own books, the scene of which is mostly laid in 
this region, and which portray manners now passing 
by. He is reputed shy, but when caught in this re- 
tired place is very easily approachable. His wife is 
sturdy and bicycles. . . . We have been very lucky in 
stumbling on people unexpectedly and have really 
seen the novelists I most care to see — Hardy, An- 
thony Hope, Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Alexander — the 
latter peculiarly dignified and attractive. . . . He 
[Hardy] surprised me by saying that all the dialect 
of his peasants (who are perfectly Shakespearean in 
quaintness and vigor) is from the memory of his 
childhood, and that he never in his life wrote down 



JOURNEYS 353 

a sentence after hearing it. I had always imagined 
him with a note-book." 

In Paris Colonel Higginson said the best thing he 
did was to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The 
little pension which sheltered us was Victor Hugo's 
old house, and the salon, which opened into a very 
pleasant garden, was his study. In September the 
record says : — 

"We had a delightful run through Switzerland. 
. . . The Protestant service in the cathedral [at 
Basle] seemed to me a glimpse of Puritanism of 200 
years ago, even to the gown and band of the preacher 
and the tythingmen who stood up to keep the boys 
in order." 

In the journey of 1901, we sailed direct for Italy, 
and from Castellamare Colonel Higginson wrote: — 

"Our visits to Madeira, Gibraltar, Tangier and 
Granada were perfectly successful and each of them 
worth crossing the ocean for." 

At Granada "we lived close to the Alhambra and 
found it more beautiful even than we had imagined, 
especially the ceilings of the rooms which were 
carved and colored like a celestial bee hive. . . . 

"We are spending a week at this beautiful place. 
Vesuvius is only a few miles away; between us and it 
stretches a beach of exquisite curve, with a slight 
line of surf. Behind it lies a level plain and a long 
row of grayish houses, and this is Pompeii. Think of 
seeing Pompeii at last!" 



354 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

From the same place his family reported: — 

''He suffers very much from not being allowed to 
tip everybody; but after being suppressed all the 
time in Tangier, on our way to the boat there a hand- 
some little Moorish girl smiled on him, and walked 
along with him smiling still, and the guide was n't 
looking, and he was lost." 

We were detained at Castellamare for several 
weeks on account of an illness of our daughter Mar- 
garet. A letter, dated April 19, says of the invalid : — 

" She is drinking a kind of local mineral water, pre- 
scribed by Pliny!! Some one suggested that a later 
endorsement might be valuable! We have to super- 
intend the goat's milking morn and night and we do it 
from an upstairs window. The goat bleats, and then 
we go. Angelo stands by her with a silver tray, the 
'fat boy* (son of the former head-waiter who was 
murdered by the former cook) helps hold her con- 
trary head, and the owner milks into a little pitcher." 

When convalescence came, the interesting Swed- 
ish doctor and author, Miinthe, advised us to go to 
Sorrento and then to Capri where he said Andrews 
and Coleman (American author and artist) would 
take care of us till he came. Dr. Miinthe had a villa 
there, but just then was in Rome in charge of the 
future King of Sweden. " At Sorrento," wrote Colonel 
Higginson, "we called on Marion Crawford the 
novelist who has a perfectly beautiful villa and 



JOURNEYS 355 

grounds. Mrs. Crawford begged us to come over 
this afternoon and see the children dance the Taran- 
tella (national dance) in honor of their father/ ' 

Removed to the bracing air of Capri, the record 
continued : — 

" Found a very pleasant circle of English and 
American men. I enjoyed also meeting Wm. Words- 
worth, grandson of the poet and himself a minor 
poet, — a most distinguished looking man, a hand- 
some likeness of his grandpapa/ ' 

And later : — 

"To tea at William Wordsworth's, returning on 
donkeys. W. W. is the favorite grandson of the 
poet." 

The next extract is from a Florence letter : — 

"May 23. To-day I lunched with the Marchesa 
Peruzzi de Medici. She is the daughter of Story the 
sculptor. She lives in a narrow street. You come up 
a fine stairway into a series of dark high rooms, with 
some quaint old furniture, frescoed walls and many 
traces of Story's sculpture work. Out of one parlor 
opens a small private chapel. I waited a while and 
heard a door open softly and in glided a little elderly 
woman, quiet as possible, and putting out a shy soft 
hand to me. I was quite bewildered by her being so 
much older in appearance and more unworldly than 
the brilliant society woman I had expected; and 
when she sat down with an anxious look and seemed 
to wait for me, I reverted to the subject which led 
me there and said, ' I was very sorry that Mr. Waldo 



356 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

Story was not in Rome when I was there, that I 
might see him' — to which she said, still timidly, 
'Ah.' Then she said breathlessly under her voice, ' I 
never was in Rome but twice in my life,' and looked 
to me for sympathy. Inasmuch as my hostess was 
born and bred there, this was rather bewildering; 
and at this moment in came hurriedly a fine-looking 
woman of the world who said eagerly to me, ' Oh, I 
must apologize for being so late ' ; and then looking at 
her said, ' I must present you to Miss Browning.' It 
was Browning's sister, companion, and amanuensis 
who still survives him at 88!! Then came in a 
younger man, short, round-faced and round-headed, 
looking like a capable business man and he was the 
present Mr. Browning, the son of two poets. This 
was he whom I used to hear of in youth as Penini 
(from Apennines, a nickname given by his mother) . 
. . . We of course talked poetry and Browning more 
or less, and we spoke of my favorite complaint of his 
alterations in his published works; and Miss B. said, 
' He used to say that of course he wished to be un- 
derstood and if people could understand better in 
one way than another the words make little differ- 
ence.' She spoke of his horror of being lionized and 
how he shuddered on some public occasion when a 
lady was selected to sit next to him (he was told) be- 
cause she was 'used to sitting by poets.' He said, 
' She will wish to give me my tea with a spoon ! ' and 
managed to have the arrangement changed, and an 
unprofessional neighbor substituted. Both she and 
the son spoke strongly of the practical character of 
Browning and said he was always ready to help 



JOURNEYS 357 

every one, while Tennyson lived more in the clouds; 
but they testified to the unbroken friendship be- 
tween the poets." 

In July we were back in England, dipping into 
Wales and exploring the Lake region. From Gras- 
mere Colonel Higginson wrote: — 

"My wife and I drove out to Rydal Mount, 
Wordsworth's later home, and as we stood looking 
through the gate a very pleasing man came from 
among the rosebushes and asked if we would not like 
to see the place. As we entered I told him that I had 
heard with pleasure that Rydal Mount was again oc- 
cupied by some of the Wordsworth family. When I 
said that I had heard it from the present William 
Wordsworth at Capri my host became quite inter- 
ested and said that his wife was the niece of my Capri 
friend. He showed us over the place where Words- 
worth used to walk up and down and declaim his 
verses aloud before going to have his sister ' pick 'em 
up for him ' as an old woman said in describing the 
process. He showed us also the particular rocks he 
had made his theme and the tree where the wren's 
nest was. . . . She [our host's wife] was quite ready 
to talk about her uncle, and then took us into the 
house and showed us some memorials of the poet, 
though most of the original furniture was sold by 
auction after his widow's death ; but some things were 
left, e.g., the cuckoo clock out of which he made a 
poem and which struck, just in time for us to hear, 
the cuckoo peeping out just in time to inspect us. 
What interested me most in the house was a really 



358 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



remarkable painting of Wordsworth by Haydon, a 
painter who always interested me by his tragic ca- 
reer; a picture of which the engravings give no ade- 
quate impression, and which brings out the shape 
and bearing of his head quite superbly.' ' 

"Keswick, Aug. 10. We have done a good deal 
'between drops' and had a delightful companion in 
Canon Rawnsley the antiquarian and factotum of 
the whole region who has taken us everywhere . . . 
but for all literary associations this whole region is 
quite unequalled; it is Concord on a much larger 
scale." 

From Windermere, Colonel Higginson wrote to 
the Reverend Reuben Kidner, whom he facetiously 
called his pastor and to whom he bore the fictitious 
relation of warden : — 
"Dearly beloved Parson: — 

"In my wanderings through foreign countries I 
have of course taken a (sometimes unappreciative) 
part in religious services in various tongues, espe- 
cially in Rome where the Higher Intelligences are 
understood to communicate mainly in Latin. They 
were less obstructive to my mind however than 
when, at the close of an early service in the Church 
of England at Bettws-y-coed in Wales I heard a lan- 
guage at once rattling and melodious and found that 
a service was proceeding in Welsh. I remembered 
the school-poem by Thomas Gray called ' The Bard ' 
which begins 

' Ruin seize thee, ruthless king 
Confusion on thy banners wait,' 



JOURNEYS 359 

and felt that confusion had prevailed in the Welsh 
language ever since. It suggested inquiring whether 
the word Welsher as applied, I am told, on the Eng- 
lish race-course to any swindler, grew out of this 
early bewilderment in the use of words. . . . 

"I learned on inquiry that the medical profession 
at least if not the clerical suffers through this confu- 
sion of tongues. The only physician in Bettws-y- 
coed, a spot known by the irreverent as Betsy Coit, 
told us that the only Welsh sentence which he had 
yet mastered was the phrase ordering a patient to 
put the tongue out, which he rightly thought essen- 
tial to his practice. Having employed this with suc- 
cess on an elderly peasant woman, it occurred to him 
too late that he had not yet learned in Welsh the re- 
quest that should have followed — to put it in again 
— so that it is not quite clear whether the good 
woman is not still standing with that useful member 
protruded. This was a confusion of tongues indeed; 
and since the tongue is clearly the banner of health 
it may be the very disaster which Gray's bard pre- 
dicted. 

"Such are the anxieties of the wanderer; and when 
I think how many opportunities I have missed of 
attending a prescribed worship in Dublin, N.H., I 
feel that I may have erred in wandering too far and 
must next year confine my sober wishes to Dublin. 
" Ever faithfully, in any one dialect, 

"Your Warden." 

A London letter written in August reports : — 

"The Colonel and Margaret had a delightful after- 



360 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

noon with Swinburne. The house where he and 
Watts-Dunton live is full of Rossetti's pictures. 
Swinburne devoted himself to Margaret and showed 
her many treasures." 

The rest of our time was spent in the south 
of England. From Wells, Colonel Higginson went 
to Glastonbury partly "to see Mrs. Clarke, John 
Bright's daughter, whom I saw in America, a strong 
reformer and Anti-Imperialist." 

At Ottery St. Mary, he enjoyed taking tea at 
Lord Coleridge's house which was full of interesting 
portraits and other memorials of the Coleridges. In 
Lord Coleridge, who was a radical, the American 
reformer found a congenial spirit. For this was 
at the time of the South African war and although 
he ordinarily felt under bonds to keep silence, all 
of Colonel Higginson's sympathies were with the 
Boers- "Nothing," he wrote, "ever revives my 
innate republicanism better than coming to Eng- 
land." 

The next step was to Winchester, the capital of the 
ancient kingdom of Alfred the Great, "to what they 
call the 'millenary' celebration (ioooth anniversary 
of King Alfred's death), probably so called because 
they all go in finery and I am to represent Harvard, 
by President Eliot's appointment." 



JOURNEYS 361 

A London letter thus described this event : — 

"I enjoyed greatly my trip to Winchester ... a 
speech of my own was received most warmly by the 
English delegates and officials, and was more effu- 
sive than is my wont. It is hard not to be so here, 
for no one in America can appreciate the warmth and 
width of the feeling in England about the President's 
[McKinley] death. No European sovereign's death 
has ever called forth so much, they say — meetings 
and mourning, flags in all churches, on the streets, 
and in the smallest villages. . . . 

" I did not know there was to be any speaking but 
the mayor came when lunch was half through and 
asked if I would respond for the delegates when he 
gave the toast, the only speech to be made; it was 
very sudden, but I did. It was most warmly re- 
ceived and people kept coming to me afterwards to 
thank me. I told them frankly that I was an anti- 
imperialist both at home and here and one of them 
said that this cleared the speech from all sound of 
flattery. . . . 

" Instead of the military part being the most 
showy as with us, the splendor was in the public offi- 
cials, especially the mayors of a dozen cities who all 
wore costumes of rich furs, velvet, silk, and gold or 
jewelled necklaces. You cannot imagine anything 
odder than to see those plain and common men, often 
awkward or fat or thin, or stooping or spectacled be- 
come transformed to something wholly gorgeous in 
the robing room before my eyes. Then the aca- 
demic men wore robes of black and purple or scarlet, 
I wearing the robes and scarlet hood of a Cambridge 



362 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

(England) LL.D., hired for 10/6 from a dealer in 
London." 

Colonel Higginson's credentials, in the shape of a 
letter from Harvard University, commended him "as 
one whose experience as a teacher, soldier, author, 
and historian has fitted him to appreciate the char- 
acter and services of the great king/' 
Rev. Mr. Horder writes of this event: — 

11 It was never my good fortune to hear the Colo- 
nel speak, but I met with fine and quite unbiassed 
testimony as to the charm of his public utterance in 
connection with the unveiling of the Alfred Statue 
at Winchester where he represented his old Univer- 
sity of Harvard. A little time afterward I was vis- 
iting the Mayor of Winchester and describing the 
Alfred celebration, he said, ' There was an American 
named Higginson who made quite the speech of the 
occasion,' and he added, 'Rosebery and he were the 
speakers, and the rest were nowhere.' " 

This record of journeys would be incomplete with- 
out some account of two visits to the Southern 
States. In the winter of 1878, while Colonel Higgin- 
son's home was still in Newport, he revisited his old 
haunts at the South. 

He wrote to his sister that their Virginia cousins 
"gave such interesting accounts of their war life, 
when the two sides alternately occupied Culpeper; 
and when either [garrison] left, they hurried to the 
camp for boxes of hard-bread or salt left behind. 



JOURNEYS 363 

They liked to have a garrison there, for they always 
lived better and the soldiers almost always behaved 
well. They were months without bread — living on 
potatoes, squashes and milk and sometimes even 
wild onions and garlic and boiled clover.' ' 

"It was so strange," he wrote from Florida, "to 
touch at Jacksonville as a quiet passenger, where I 
could once have burned the city with a word. How- 
ever, greatness is always appreciated and a man 
came on board with a message for the steamboat 
Captain and insisted on delivering it to me. I 
have n't had such an honor since my little nephew 
took me (in uniform) for a policeman. . . . Col- 
ored church in evening with just such 'shouting' 
as we used to have in my regiment — I feared it 
was all gone. Things are so little changed to the 
eye, it is almost incredible that fifteen years have 
passed. 

"I have been down to Jacksonville for the day," 
he wrote from Magnolia. " I said in my 'Army Life' 
that I should feel like a Rip Van Winkle who once 
wore uniform — but it went beyond my dreams in 
that way. The city I had last seen deserted and in 
flames, I found made over into a summer paradise. 
... I was alone with my ghosts of fifteen years ago 
and got a horse and went wandering round, searching 
for my past. The forts we built were levelled, only a 
furrow here and there in the ground. Where we made 
a lookout in a steeple, there was the church, but with 
a new spire. The house where I sat all night on the 
doorsteps waiting for an attack was burned long 
since. The house I had for headquarters, then the 



364 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

pride of the town, is now an old house and in poor 
condition. The railroad along which we used to skir- 
mish is torn up and I traced its line with difficulty to 
the woods that formed our debatable ground; they 
were the same, [but] where once was a dangerous 
ford, was now a bridge and fine road. Nothing was 
wholly unchanged but the exquisite climate and the 
budding spring. I began to feel fearfully bewildered, 
as if I had lived multitudes of lives. An individual 
seems so insignificant in presence of the changes of 
time; he is nothing, even if his traces are mingled 
with fire and blood." 

Here the former Colonel met one of his old ser- 
geants, and ' ' we agreed to have some others of the 
men come and meet me there next Tuesday, and 
with their warm hearts, I can let the past take care of 
itself. One curious thing I should mention is that as 
it was Washington's birthday, guns were being fired 
all the while, so like those remote days." 

A second visit in the spring of 1904 gave Colonel 
Higginson an opportunity to see the wonders of the 
"New South." At this time he was a guest of Mr. 
Robert Ogden on his educational trip through the 
Southern States. On account of Colonel Higginson' s 
war experience, he felt a little doubtful as to his re- 
ception by Southerners. To find that he was known 
through his books, — many of which were in 
Southern libraries — rather than as leader of a black 
regiment was a delightful surprise. "People hardly 



JOURNEYS 365 

seem to remember the war at all," he wrote. " Never 
in my life have I been received so warmly and every- 
where I have found my books well known, one 
private school even using my 'Young Folks History, 5 
and one schoolmaster in South Carolina holding my 
Epictetus to be next to the Bible." 

To find that certain Southern libraries had been 
sadly injured in the Civil War appealed to Colonel 
Higginson's sense of justice; and he interested his 
friends in replenishing the vacant shelves, contribut- 
ing many books from his own library. 

Both white and colored schools were visited on 
this trip, but Booker Washington's Institution at 
Tuskegee and the Calhoun school, of which Colonel 
Higginson was a trustee, were of especial interest to 
him. At Calhoun, which is in the " Black Belt," the 
colored people came from twenty miles around, 
many walking this distance barefoot, and gathered 
in a grove to listen to addresses, one of which was 
made by Colonel Higginson. It was a striking scene, 
this mass of jet black faces all eagerly upturned 
to the speaker, and responding to his words with 
sympathetic nods and ejaculations. The objective 
point of the " Conference for Education in the 
South " was Birmingham, Alabama. Here the " Yan- 
kee" Colonel was cordially entertained by a man 
whose father had been in the Confederate army 



366 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

and who was captured at Gettysburg and died in 
prison. 

At the evening opening of the Conference, which 
was in a large and crowded theatre, Colonel Higgin- 
son was one of the speakers. The only colored per- 
sons present were confined to an upper gallery and 
to this small contingent the former commander of a 
black regiment at once turned his attention and his 
remarks. That was a tense half-hour for his special 
friends, who felt as if they were all treading the edge 
of a volcano. The speaker, who was quite aware of 
this solicitude, kept skilfully within the danger-line 
and won the applause of his critical audience. When 
the meeting broke up, he turned to a stately ex- 
Confederate officer, saying, "I hope I have said 
nothing improper !" This old-time Southern gentle- 
man laid a benignant hand on Colonel Higginson's 
shoulder and exclaimed, "Say what you please!" 

On his return from this memorable trip, Colonel 
Higginson found that he was somewhat criticized by 
certain Boston colored people, who were antagonis- 
tic to Booker Washington, for taking part in the ex- 
pedition and especially for speaking at Tuskegee. 
Thereupon, with his usual fearless way of grappling 
with difficulties, Colonel Higginson requested his 
critics to meet him at Parker Memorial Hall. With 
one sympathetic friend, Rev. Edward Cummings, to 






JOURNEYS 367 

second his efforts, he talked plainly to his audience 
of their mistakes and dangers, of their opportunities 
and responsibilities ; and through his talk ran always 
the warm strain of personal sympathy and affection 
for the race. He might well have ended this speech 
with these words uttered on another public occasion : 

" Formerly I had no protection around my tent 
except in the fidelity and courage of black soldiers, 
and so long as I live, every drop of blood in my veins 
will beat true to them." 



XVI 

THE CROWNING YEARS 

In 1889, Colonel Higginson began what proved to be 
a four years' task of editing, with Mrs. Mabel 
Loomis Todd of Amherst, Emily Dickinson's poems 
and letters. Of this work he wrote Mrs. Todd : — 

"I can't tell you how much I am enjoying the 
poems. There are many new to me which take my 
breath away." 

A year later he wrote to her : — 

"You are the only person who can feel as I do 
about this extraordinary thing we have done in re- 
cording this rare genius. I feel as if we had climbed 
to a cloud, pulled it away, and revealed a new star 
behind it. . . . Such things as I find in her letters! 
1 The Madonnas I see are those that pass the House 
to their work, carrying Saviours with them.' Is not 
that one of the take-your-breath-away thoughts? 

"There is much that I never could print, as where 
she writes, 'Of our greatest acts we are ignorant. 
You were not aware that you saved my life.' What a 
unique existence was hers!" 

Four years later, he wrote : — 

" I feel half sorry to hear that the book is so nearly 
ready; it will be the last, I suppose, and will not only 



THE CROWNING YEARS 369 

yield the final news of Emily Dickinson, but take 
from me a living companionship I shall miss." 

After the volume of letters was published, of which 
Mrs. Todd was the principal editor, Colonel Higgin- 
son wrote to her November 29, 1894: — 

" Emily has arrived. They sent her to Sever's 
book store where I rarely go and where she might 
have hid forever in a cupboard. ... It is extraordi- 
nary how the mystic and bizarre Emily is born at 
once between two pages ... as Thoreau says summer 
passes to autumn in an instant. All after that is the 
E. D. I knew. But how is it possible to reconcile her 
accounts of early book reading . . . with the yarns 
(0! irreverence) she told me about their first books, 
concealed from her father in the great bush at the 
door or under the piano cover? Well! what an en- 
cyclopaedia of strange gifts she was." 

During these years of fascinating though strenu- 
ous editorial labor, Colonel Higginson was also en- 
gaged on various pieces of original work. He wrote 
in July, 1890: — 

"I am now to correct proof of three books — 
Epictetus, American Sonnets and Emily Dickinson's 
poems." 

And in November : — 

"I was about writing the determination never 
again to have three books on hand at same time, 
going through the press, when I found myself en- 



370 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

trapped into a promise to give the Centennial Ora- 
tion of Massachusetts Historical Society, having 
also to prepare an address for 19th Century Club, and 
the life of Francis Higginson besides my regular 
work. Too much again/ ' 

Yet one day when proofs of several different articles 
came to him, he said, "I am naturally a glutton of 
such work and rather enjoy it." 

In the spring of that year he visited the battlefield 
of Gettysburg in connection with his Military His- 
tory and wrote home: — 

"At Gettysburg I rose at 6 a.m. and soon after 
seven set off with fifty people and two buglers in a 
series of omnibuses and barouches to drive about, 
over twenty miles of Union and Confederate lines of 
battle. At certain places we stopped, were called to- 
gether by the buglers while Colonel Batchelder who 
is a sort of professor of Gettysburg battle knowledge 
told us just what happened, and as we had with us a 
number of persons who had been in the battle at dif- 
ferent points, they often added their reminiscences. 
One of these was a western physician who had lost 
his hearing in the battle by the noise of cannon and 
whenever we stopped and gathered round the 
speaker, he would run up to the front and stick his 
long ear trumpet up to Colonel B. and drink it all in 
with beaming eyes. . . . Squirrels played where once 
guns had thundered and I saw a great Luna moth 
quietly reposing against a tree. After all the bright- 
ness and beauty, it was a haunting place and day, 



THE CROWNING YEARS 371 

and I understood a great battle as I never did 
before." 

To Margaret he wrote: — 

"The blackbirds and meadow larks were all sing- 
ing on the farms at Gettysburg and as we drove 
along our bugler would sometimes make a great 
noise (toot-toot-toot) with his bugle, and the birds 
would go flying away. He was a little fat man with a 
great blue overcoat and his cheeks looked as if he 
had puffed so much at the bugle that they were all 
round and swelled and he could not get them back 
again. 

"When we went away from Baltimore to Gettys- 
burg there was a great good-natured old woman, jet 
black, who bade us all good-bye at the station. She 
had a large round face and no teeth and a common 
towel, very clean, pinned round her head and under 
her chin; and when we came back there she was, all 
ready to receive us, and saying, 'Got back all safe? 
Bress de Lord ! ' And when we got into our carriages 
again, a lot of little black boys and girls ran along 
beside us, shouting whenever the bugler played." 

After this visit he noted in the journal : " Began anew 
on history with fresh interest for visiting localities." 
The summer of 1890 was spent in Dublin, New 
Hampshire, which became henceforth a permanent 
summer home. The little daughter wrote her aunt 
in Brattleboro : — 

"Papa wishes you to know that the castle in the 



372 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

air has a place on earth. He has just bought an acre 
of ground beautifully situated above the lake. We 
begin building this autumn." 

These bits of Dublin life are from the diaries: — 

"June 12, 1891. Began thoroughly to enjoy the 
primitive forest feeling. Felt that conscious happi- 
ness which Thoreau describes — every little pine 
needle seeming to stretch toward me. There was a 
feeling as of late summer in the air and the crickets' 
incessant chirp seemed saturated with happiness. 
It was enough simply to live and look round on the 
trees I love." 

Her father always bore an active part in Mar- 
garet's birthday celebrations, whether they took 
the form of climbing the mountain, perhaps getting 
drenched in the mountain brook on the way, or a 
picnic in the woods. Later, on her seventeenth birth- 
day, he joined in the Virginia Reel. 

About an earlier celebration, he wrote to his sister 
that the children "played and swung and then came 
the two young Smiths [Joseph Lindon and his bro- 
ther] clad in brilliant Japanese costumes who made 
great fun as they always do. We had tea on a large 
flat boulder above the road shaded by pines, and 
this was very merry. . . . 

" It is very pretty to see her and Rob [an Irish set- 
ter] dancing about together with the butterflies. The 
birds come quite near her and do not seem afraid, and 
sometimes, when she whistles to them, they answer 
her from the forest. . . . 



THE CROWNING YEARS 373 

"S. . . . calls me Thomas Ewart Higginson from 
my devotion to the Gladstonian axe; I am clearing 
away a good many of the little gray birches which 
obstruct more valuable trees. ... I find endless joy 
in pottering about among trees and shrubs." 

"Aug. 7, With Margaret, watching birds, and she 
climbing trees." 

"Sept. 29, First gipsying with Margaret for flow- 
ers." 

This referred to an autumnal habit of the "happy 
little couple," as the child called her father and her- 
self, of plundering our friends' flower-beds after their 
owners had gone. 

"Oct. 10, Felt as I strolled about after breakfast 
that I should be willing to go to sleep for the winter 
and wake up to find myself here [Dublin] again. 
There is still woodchopping to be done and I hate to 
leave it." 

Of our neighbors the Abbot Thayers, he said they 
"live outdoors, know all birds and butterflies, and 
rear the latter from the chrysalis till they flutter in 
and out of the great sitting-room as if it were their 
home." 

One summer we had Mark Twain for a neighbor : — 

"Called on Clemens. Found him in bed where he 
prefers to write, a strange picturesque object, in 
night clothes, with curly white hair standing up over 
his head. The bed was covered with written sheets 
which his daughter carried off at intervals, to be 



374 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

copied by her on typewriter, his secretary only writ- 
ing his correspondence. He often leaves off any- 
thing in the middle and begins on something else 
and goes back to it. He has always worked in this 
way and likes it." 

In our early years at Dublin, the Smiths* outdoor 
theatre was dedicated and Colonel Higginson read 
these lines. They are given as a specimen of his gift 
at impromptu verse, which was often in demand on 
such occasions. Later he himself took part in a mir- 
acle play, "Theophile," written by our neighbor, 
Henry Copley Greene, for the Teatro Bambino, in 
which Higginson personated an aged abbot. 

"When the Goddess of Dulness would rule o'er this planet 
And bind all amusements, like Samson, with withes, 

Fate conquered her scheme, ere she fairly began it, 
By producing one household — a household of Smiths. 

" Fate selected the seed of a Rhode Island Quaker 
Its wit and its wisdom, its mirth and its pith, 

And brought all these gifts to a Point — one half acre — 
And gave to the product the surname of Smith. 

"Though Care killed a cat it cannot hush the Mewses 
Nor reduce all our joys to monotonous myth; 

Some gleams of pure fun o'er the earth Fate diffuses, — 
So cheers, three times three, for the household of Smith!" 

In those first years of the Dublin life, when the 
shore of the lake was not wholly owned by summer 
residents and was still the scene of annual town pic- 
nics, Colonel Higginson took a cordial part in those 



THE CROWNING YEARS 375 

festivities, and usually made some address to the 
throng of young and old. He also spoke at meetings 
of the Farmers' Grange. Men who were then boys 
still remember their delight in these talks from a 
man who had "been in the war," who wrote books, 
and could tell no end of amusing stories. One of 
these youths, now a college professor, writes of 
Colonel Higginson : — 

"The traits that marked his summer life at Dub- 
lin specially appealed to me; his sincere recognition 
of genuine manhood and womanhood in the towns- 
folk and his detection of a poetic element in even the 
grim and seemingly sordid side of country life." 

Literary work was continued at Dublin and the 
author's secretary imported for a time each sum- 
mer, as this plea to his so-called pastor for the loan 
of a typewriter shows: — 

"Reverend Sir: — 

"A virtuous maid has arrived at this house, for 
whose spiritual welfare I am bound to concern my- 
self. She is to do certain copying for Goodman Hart 
and myself on that carnal instrument called a type- 
writer, which I myself eschew, finding it to savor lit- 
tle of the great Scriptural Types which we are bidden 
to revere. 

"Now the only typewriting machine yet acces- 
sible here is that belonging to your neighbor Good- 
man Cooke, a species of lay preacher, who offers his 



376 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

for the afternoon. Yet I ask myself, Is it meet that 
this maid, soberly nurtured . . . should perform the 
office of writing on a Unitarian typewriter and that 
only? Should she not be kept in the right path, dur- 
ing each morning, by a typewriter of sounder views 
— your own perchance? Pray consider, perpend and 
reply. 

"Your faithful Parishioner. 

" Written at the breakfast table — hence spots. But 
what are these, besides spots on the Faith?" 

The distinction of being Harvard's oldest graduate 
Colonel Higginson whimsically coveted. He wrote 
to his sister in 1890: — 

"I am renewing my efforts for the post of oldest 
living graduate of Harvard and have now only 236 
ahead of me, not counting my classmates/ ' 

"One curious feeling," he meditated, "about 
Commencement in growing older is that you do not 
feel as if you were getting among the oldest, but as if 
the really old men had grown lazy and stayed away." 

The return to Cambridge in the autumn was al- 
ways delightful to him on account of the tide of 
young life flowing in at the beginning of the college 
year. He took a perennial interest in the football 
games, going to Harvard Square to learn the results 
long after he was obliged to give up attending the 
contests. He wrote in his diary of 1901: "Nov. 22. 
Football game — very exciting. Harvard 22\ o. 



THE CROWNING YEARS 377 

When a young man attempts to kick a goal in such a 
game as to-day's, he has 36,000 pairs of eyes fastened 
with interest upon him. Is there any other such 
opportunity in life?" 

The students were often sent to Colonel Higginson 
by their instructors to glean information about the 
Anti-Slavery period, and he was often asked to talk 
to them in their own haunts. Many were the times 
when he was enabled by the generosity of his friends, 
who were always ready to respond to his calls for 
money, to give substantial aid to struggling youths 
and maidens. If these aspirants for an education 
happened to be colored, they enlisted from him all 
the more sympathy. Such entries as these in his 
diary were not uncommon, the second referring to a 
Radcliffe Commencement: — 

"Went with young to further his application 

for Harvard scholarship." 

"Was anxious because I could not see my colored 
protege [a young girl whom he had helped through 
college] until actually called up. When she came and 
had more applause than any, I felt that I would 
rather give up my degree for to-morrow than that 
all her efforts and mine should fail." 

For in 1898 Colonel Higginson was given by Harvard 
the degree of LL.D., an honor already conferred 
upon him by Western Reserve University two years 
earlier. As he went forward to receive this honor, he 



378 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

was greeted with a prolonged burst of enthusiasm 
which was almost overpowering. He wrote in his 
diary, June 26: — 

" Received degree of LL.D. somewhat tardily, but 
glad of delay for the sake of the roar of applause 
from the audience (beginning with the young men) 
which greeted it. It was wholly a surprise to me and 
was something to have lived for." 

The secret of Colonel Higginson's popularity was 
the overflowing fountain of sympathy which pulsed 
in his veins. Lowell's lines might have been written 
about him : — 

"[He] doeth little kindnesses 
Which most leave undone, or despise." 

One of these was his invariable habit of writing to 
young authors whose work had pleased him. A 
typical instance of the little thoughtful deeds which 
always seemed to be second nature to him is given 
the writer by a Yale professor. When a lonely and 
homesick sophomore at Harvard, he was startled to 
receive a call from Colonel Higginson with an invita- 
tion to attend an interesting meeting in Boston, not 
open to the public. To this day he does not know 
how his unexpected visitor discovered him, but he 
says the incident brought the first real pleasure into 
his college life. 

" You know," one of his early friends, now a well- 



THE CROWNING YEARS 379 

known author, wrote to him, "how fully you have 
my affection with that of so many others to whom 
you have opened great avenues of happiness." It 
was easier for him to emphasize a man's good points 
rather than his failings, and he was always ready to 
make excuses for one who was in any way criticized 
— a trait that his impetuous young daughter some- 
times found trying. People who were almost stran- 
gers unburdened their souls to him as to a father con- 
fessor. As he once said, "It is my fortune or mis- 
fortune to have one of those temperaments which 
have since early youth drawn unexpected and some- 
times perilous confidences from others." 

Applicants for assistance were never turned away, 
even if by helping them pecuniarily he inconven- 
ienced himself. Mr. George Higginson (father of 
Henry Lee Higginson) once gave his cousin Went- 
worth an illustration of this family trait. Hailing an 
imaginary passer-by, he cried, "Do you want any- 
thing?" — at the same time thrusting his hand into 
his pocket and bringing it out full of silver. "Here, 
take this!" So long as the silver lasted this form of 
philanthropy came easily; but the most injurious of 
the daily visitors were those who robbed the busy 
author of precious time. Expressing one day some 
doubt about the advantage of a future life, one of the 
family attempted to expostulate. "But I should 



380 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

have to meet so many people who bore me!" was 
his quick rejoinder. 

A Cambridge young man who was a "checker" at 
the polls in the fall of 1900 at the same booth where 
Colonel Higginson voted, received a lesson in citizen- 
ship at that time which impressed him deeply. The 
atmosphere of the booth in question he described as 
most repulsive; but the story can best be told in 
the youth's own words, as printed in a local news- 
paper : — 

"The writer, while not particularly finicky, by ten 
o'clock that morning was heartily sick of his job. At 
about ten o'clock, however, the door opened, and in 
stepped Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. I 
shall never forget his appearance. He was very 
plainly dressed and had on a rather old looking 
ulster. . . . His figure, however, was full of dignity. 
With an air of utmost veneration and respect, such 
as I have never seen before or since, he removed his 
hat from his head and then stepped forward to get 
his ballot. During the whole time that he was cast- 
ing his ballot he kept his hat in his hand and only 
put it on when he had stepped out of the door into 
the street. That is all he did — simply removed his 
hat — but I can never forget his manner in doing it. 
. . . No one knew better than he the real value of the 
privilege of voting and knowing it he treated it with 
the respect which is its due. . . . Since I saw Mr. 
Higginson cast his vote, I have never failed to take 
off my hat when casting mine." 



THE CROWNING YEARS 381 

In 1892, Colonel Higginson's devoted sister Anna 
died, and he wrote, " It was a touching thing thus to 
close the half century of our family's residence in 
Brattleboro, where they went in 1842." But the 
gradual disappearance of early friends never visibly 
depressed him. He lived in the present, and when dis- 
appointed in a contemporary wrote in his diary, 
" Thank God, there are always children!" 

The lecture habit was assiduously pursued, and on 
the four hundredth anniversary of the landing of Co- 
lumbus, 1892, he wrote, "I give a Columbus and 
musical address in New York on October 21, for 
which I am to be paid $250, twice the biggest fee I 
ever get for a speech." This celebration took the 
form of a concert, the handbill stating: "In the 
course of the proceedings an oration will be delivered 
by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson." 

The author's seventieth birthday came in 1893. 
It was made an especially festive occasion by his 
friends, and the little red house was thronged. These 
celebrations were continued through successive 
birthdays when flowers, letters, telegrams, and per- 
sonal greetings made the day a milestone. Although 
the different eras through which he had passed made 
him feel as if he had lived several lives, he seldom un- 
less urged spoke of past events in which he had had a 
share. His athletic training served him well, and 



382 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

until long after seventy he bounded upstairs like a 
boy, two or three steps at a time. In 1895 and again 
in 1 90 1, he gave a course of lectures at Western Re- 
serve University, and in one week he records speaking 
every day. Overwork finally brought its penalty, and 
in the autumn of 1895 he was sentenced to confine- 
ment in his room and a milk diet. This trying ill- 
ness lasted for a year, during which he wrote his 
" Cheerful Yesterdays" propped up with pillows. On 
Christmas Day he wrote to his friends at the Cam- 
bridge Public Library: — 

" I am moving slowly along and have now held out 
to me the munificent offer of a raw egg, which seems 
a whole Christmas dinner after eight weeks of milk- 
cure! . . . Some people think I write better than 
formerly, in my horizontal attitude!" 

On the cover of the diary for 1896, he wrote: — 

'"Now that I begin to know a little, I die/ St. 
Augustine." 

And within the covers are these entries : — 

"Jan. 6. For 10 weeks to-morrow I have had ab- 
solutely no nourishment but milk. ... I have done a 
great deal of reading and writing on this and some 
talking." 

"Jan. 13. Per contra, had to give up the hope of 
working on the history in bed. I cannot handle the 
wide sheets or heavy books. It is a great disappoint- 
ment." 



THE CROWNING YEARS 383 

"Feb. 6. Wedding Day celebrated, not unpro- 
saically, by an Easter lily and a cup of mutton broth. 
Delicious! beyond my dreams! It is almost worth 
three months of milk alone to get the flavor of that 
first cup of broth.' ' 

"Mar. 1. I still remain with my head in perfect 
condition, able to write ad libitum. I enjoy life and 
have adapted myself wonderfully to my recumbent 
condition." 

"Apr. 5. Beautiful Easter Sunday. Choir from 
church [First Parish] came and sang hymns — an 
entire surprise and delight." 

Colonel Higginson's own physician was confident 
of his recovery, although most of the profession who 
knew of his condition thought it impossible that a man 
of his age could revive. The consulting physician 
wrote to him the following summer, "I am rejoiced 
to hear of your favorable progress, which I regard as 
due largely to a sound mind." In some anxiety as to 
how he should meet the expenses of this illness, he 
received what he called "bread upon the waters." 
Many years before, he had befriended a young man 
who was convicted of burglary and sentenced to 
prison, and had given substantial aid to establish 
him in business when he was released. His own 
account of this bit of good fortune is found in his 
diary : — 

" May 2. Received from Mrs. check for $500 



384 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

for two notes of her brother for $123 dated about 
1859 . . . having long held them as worthless, this 
being with compound interest at perhaps 4 pr. ct. 
though the notes were without interest. . . . Great 
surprise." 

In June the invalid was transported to Dublin, 
and in July made the following note: — 

"July 30. Sent to printers first (new) instalment 
of narrative. ['Cheerful Yesterdays.'] . . . Collapse. 
. . . This involves putting back on milk diet and 
cessation of drives for a time. Giving up autumn 
journey part planned. Giving up (probably) winter 
lecturing. Giving up (probably) England next year. 
Very possibly semi-invalidism for the rest of my 
life. Still this to be quietly faced and recognized." 

However, these anxieties proved needless, as the 
next year saw him sufficiently recovered to embark 
for Europe. 

It pleased him to find that during the year in bed 
he had earned more by writing than in several pre- 
vious years. In April of this year (1896) he made a 
list of books read in the previous six months — forty- 
two in all. He also noted that in seven years he had 
read four hundred and seventy-nine books. Giving 
away books was another source of pleasure, those 
given to different libraries during his life amounting 
to ten thousand volumes. He also gave to the Gray 
Herbarium of Harvard College his botanical note- 



THE CROWNING YEARS 385 

books which were pronounced by the professor in 
charge " a careful chronicle of a vegetation which for 
this immediate region has largely disappeared for- 
ever." His correspondence with and concerning 
John Brown was given to the Boston Public Library; 
also collections of Margaret Fuller Ossoli's and 
Emily Dickinson's letters. 

December 1st he recorded, " My office of Military 
and Naval Historian expired, much to my satisfac- 
tion, after seven years and four months." An exten- 
sion of a year's time without compensation was 
however granted at Colonel Higginson's request, and 
the " History" was satisfactorily completed. 

These fragments from the diary after his recovery 
show the continued activity: — 

"Oct. 20, 1897. Evening presided at Anthony 
Hope Hawkins's reading. Had him here after- 
wards." 

"Feb. 12, 1898. Springfield. Spoke at Lincoln 
dinner after half hour's reception to 100 men." 

" March 9. Spent morning at State House — out- 
rageous bill against Sunday Concerts." 

"May 31, 1900. Evening, Boer meeting and pre- 
sided. Got through well, though voice not strong. 
The three Boer envoys unusually fine looking men." 

This was a meeting at Faneuil Hall where envoys 
from the Boer Republic presented their side of the 
South African trouble with England. From a news- 



386 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

paper account of a similar meeting in Worcester at 
which Colonel Higginson presided, this extract is 
taken : — 

" However much the audience sympathized with 
the Boers, they very much more disliked England, 
and when the presiding officer undertook to say a 
word in behalf of England's effort in behalf of hu- 
manity, in spite of her wrong attitude toward the 
Boers, he was greeted with a perfect hurricane of 
objurgations. The Colonel quietly waited until the 
riot had ceased when he went on calm and unruffled ; 
and my admiration, always great, sensibly rose as 
J saw his wonderful command of himself." 

"Feb. 15, 1901. p.m. Lectured to Filene's work- 
people on 'People I have Met.'" 

"Mar. 6, 1902. Prince Henry of Prussia here. I 
spoke at the dinner at the Somerset/ ' 

After the " Military History " was off his hands he 
wrote, "Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the 
Atlantic," "Book and Heart," and "Old Cam- 
bridge." In 1900, he began a "Life of Longfellow" 
for the American Men of Letters series, and in 1902 
wrote a biography of Whittier, recording in July, 
"Have worked for ten days on Whittier — aver- 
aging 1000 words daily." 

The French writer, Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc), 
after visiting this country in the nineties, wrote an 
account of Colonel Higginson which was translated 



THE CROWNING YEARS 387 

with the inapt title, "A Typical American." The 
1902 diary says: — 

"Received proof of 'A Typical American, ' by 
Madame Blanc; a London translation into English 
sent me for revision. 

" I regard this as the greatest honor of my life, in a 
literary way — to be treated so fully in the ' Revue 
des Deux Mondes ' by so able and so distinguished a 
woman and then to have it fully translated and pub- 
lished in London. Of course it gratified me, even 
if sometimes overstated and undeserved, gratified 
more than such pleasant personal tributes as those of 
Justin McCarthy, Tom Hughes, and others in their 
books of reminiscences." 

In February of the same year, he writes: — 

"It was curious after my seven months' absence 
[in Europe] when I wrote nothing for print, to come 
back and find the same continuous impulse of hard 
work in my study." 

"April 3, 1902. Evening. E. E. Hale Festival — 
a fine meeting, thoroughly worked up and in a good 
cause; but I should not wish to have any injudicious 
friends try the same thing for me, even on a smaller 
scale, for my birthday. Such occasions are carnivals 
of flattery, no discrimination, no one venturing to say 
the exact truth. Should it ever be attempted for me, 
I wish to be painted as I am." 

"Aug. 4. Early this morning I read over some of 
the opening chapters of my ■ Cheerful Yesterdays, ' and 
it seemed like another world, though a deeply inter- 



388 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

esting and picturesque one, and I wondered whether 
it might be permanently read by students as a living 
picture of that period. Without the slightest feeling 
of old age I am drifting, I suppose, toward another 
sphere of existence, even more strange and interest- 
ing, I dare say, than this one has been." 

His admiration of the Shaw Monument by Saint- 
Gaudens, on Boston Common, led him often to re- 
visit it; and on one of these occasions he wrote the 
following lines in his notebook: — 

"Ever before mine eyes the beautiful pageant is passing, 
Colonel and dusky braves, who are marching onward forever, 
But for some inches of space, one trivial turn of Fate's arrow, 
I had been riding there, foredoomed to Shaw's glory im- 
mortal." 

"Written beside the monument 
"Jan. 25, 1902." 

Several of Colonel Higginson's poems were set to 
music, "Sixty and Six," "Vestis Angelica," and 
"The Trumpeter/ ' a poem he wrote after hearing 
the first two lines sung in a dream. " Waiting for the 
Bugle* ' had two different settings. One of his most 
musical poems written for special occasions was 
the unpublished one read at a small dinner given 
in Boston to celebrate Josephine Preston Peabody's 
engagement to Lionel Marks, Professor of Engi- 
neering at Harvard College. He called it "'The 
Go- Abroad' (Sequel to 'The Stay at Home/ by 



THE CROWNING YEARS 389 

Josephine P. Peabody) "; and these are the first two 
stanzas: — 

"We have waited, we have longed — 
We have longed as none can know, 
While this winter smiled with sun 

And the spring came in with snow, 
Waiting till some hour serene, 
Bridegroom worthy should be seen, 
For Josephine. 

"Softly has time glided on — 

Love, that wondrous engineer, 
Who the hopes of youth and maid 

Brings together, far or near, 
Drew these closer, till there fell 
Potent hands that bound her well 
To Lionel." 

In 1899-1900 Colonel Higginson gave a course of 
lectures before the Lowell Institute upon "American 
Orators and Oratory/ ' and recorded the fact in his 
diary: "Nov. 15. My first Lowell lecture (of course, 
extempore) and enjoyed it much. Audience fine and 
cordial.' ' In 1902-03, he gave a second course of 
Lowell Lectures on "American Literature in the 
Nineteenth Century"; and in the winter of 1905 
he delivered a third course on "English Literature 
in the Last Half of the Nineteenth Century." At 
these lectures, he was always greeted with crowded 
houses. 

" Dec. 23, 1902. Much pleased to find that I could 
still speak without notes and without forgetfulness 



390 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

or confusion. I had been a little anxious about this 
and have therefore written out my Lowell lectures in 
full." 

" Jan. 5, 1903. The lecture was considered a great 
success. All standing room occupied and almost 
everybody stayed through. I found reading to be far 
easier than speaking without notes (as I have done 
so long) and almost as effective; it seemed like be- 
ginning a new career and my voice served me well." 

Of the third course, in 1905, he wrote: — 

"Feb. 28. First Lowell lecture (Wordsworth- 
shire). A great success — an unexpectedly fine 
voice." 

"March 7. Second Lowell lecture. Carlyle, 
Ruskin, Froude, Hunt." 

"March 28. Fifth Lowell lecture. Dickens, 
Thackeray and reading Tennyson's poems." 

"April 4. Last Lowell lecture. Considered very 
successful and was pronounced by John Lowell the 
best he ever heard in that hall." 

In May, 1903, he spoke at the Concord Emerson 
celebration : — 

"Meeting good and my address successful. After 
it, Senator Hoar turned to me and said, grasping my 
hand, 'What I have to say is pewter and tinsel com- 
pared to that.'" 

His position as chairman of the Harvard Visiting 
Committee on English Literature he resigned in 
1903, having served on this and other Visiting Com- 



THE CROWNING YEARS 391 

mittees for sixty-odd years. In the latter part of that 
year he wrote in the journal, " I always keep on my 
desk ' Sunset and Evening Star' [Tennyson's ' Cross- 
ing the Bar'], and am ready for whatever comes." 
On the eve of his eightieth birthday, in 1903, a recep- 
tion was given to him by the Boston Authors' Club, 
when Judge Robert Grant read his inspiring verses 
written for the occasion, and afterwards printed in 
the "Atlantic Monthly," beginning: — 

"Preacher of a liberal creed, 
Pioneer in Freedom's cause ; 
Ever prompt to take the lead 
In behalf of saner laws, 
Still your speech persuasive flows 
As the brooks of Helicon. 
You have earned a fair repose, 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson!" 

This poem Colonel Higginson called "one of the 
greatest laurels I ever won." He thus alluded in his 
diary to the celebration : — 

"Dec. 21. Evening — an unexpected and elabo- 
rate reception by the Authors' Club. There was a 
series of flattering speeches, of a more headturning 
description than anything I ever had addressed to 
me, but they left me happy and humble." 

After one of the receptions given him by the Grand 
Army Post which bore his name, he wrote, "Recep- 
tion by T. W. H. Post Sons of Veterans — much en- 
thusiasm making me feel quite humble." 



392 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

These notes from the journals show the intellec- 
tual and physical activity of the remaining years: — 

"Old Colored Women's Home. A jolly spectacle, 
those old ladies at their tea-table; some of them with 
white fleecy hair, very becoming, and good fea- 
tures.' ' 

"Feb. 23, 1904. Evening reception from the 
colored people in Boston, with warm speeches and 
poetry, etc. It is long since I have been in so close 
relations with them and their hearts are as warm as 



ever." 



"Mar. 15, 1904. Lecture South Boston (People I 
have Met) Church of the Redeemer ... a remark- 
ably interesting audience — mostly teachers, me- 
chanics and children, very attentive and sympa- 
thetic; and greeting me with much personal ardor. 
It was in an Episcopal chapel hall, but included 
many Roman Catholics, which I like." 

"June 26, 1905. Began work in earnest on life of 
my grandfather [Stephen Higginson] and enjoyed 
it." 

"June 28, 1905. To Rochester, N.Y. to give a Phi 
Beta Kappa address and felt no harm from it." 

"July 6. First proof from ' Part of a Man's Life.' " 

This was in a manner a continuation of "Cheerful 
Yesterdays," although more fragmentary. 

In 1905, Margaret was married, with her father's 
cordial approval, to a young Boston physician. The 
ceremony took place in the village church at Dublin, 
and Dr. Robert Collyer officiated. Fortunately his 



THE CROWNING YEARS 393 

views about the " heathen obey" coincided with 

those of the bride's father. This clergyman was wont 

to relate in his own amusing way the beginning of his 

friendship with Colonel Higginson. When living in 

Chicago, he heard Higginson speak on physical 

training and utter an impressive warning against 

the use of mince pie. Dr. Collyer's curiosity was 

excited, and after the lecture he invested in one of 

the condemned viands. The consequence was, he 

declared, that his larder was ever after stocked with 

mince pies. This reverend gentleman and Colonel 

Higginson were born in the same year, and the 

latter once wrote these humorous lines for the 

clergyman's birthday: — 

"I entered glad on life's wide fold, 
But soon my hopes grew colder; 
How could I e'er seem wise or bold 
With him a fortnight older? 

"I never could be blithe as he 
Since he was always jollier: 
So I '11 his faithful collie be 
With him forever Collyer." 

It is said that Higginson's opposition to church or- 
ganization lessened in later life. He said himself, " I 
am not sure of any change of attitude, though doubt- 
less old age makes one more equable in general at- 
titude." At any rate he considered it his duty to 
attend church semi-occasionally, both summer and 



394 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

winter. His family rallied him for sleeping through 
the sermon, but in such cases it always happened 
that he had remembered more of the discourse than 
any of those who criticized him. 
The 1906 diary records: — 

"Feb. 12. Evening at North End school — very 
turbulent — Italian boys, but I enjoyed talking to 
them, until I read from Army Life which was a mis- 
take. Never read before children.' ' 

"Mar. 12. Boston before legislative committee at 
State House, with 8 old soldiers against me." 

This meeting was to consider the erection of a statue 
to General Butler, which Colonel Higginson opposed. 

"Mar. 19. At Binghamton, N.Y. p.m. Lecture 
and had good audience of perhaps 250 in hard 
storm." 

"June 28. Phi Beta Kappa. At meeting, gave no- 
tice of amendment next year in regard to women's 
admission to dinner." 

Two grandchildren came to cheer these later days, 
the first a boy named Wentworth born in 1906, of 
whom he wrote : — 

"The beautiful and happy baby makes my health 
or illness a secondary trifle — if I can only pass 
quietly away without those melancholy intermediate 
days or weeks when I may be only a burden." 

And at Ipswich, two years later, he thus announced 
the arrival of a second little Margaret: — 




THE GRANDCHILDREN 



THE CROWNING YEARS 395 

"One of the happiest days of my life, in the birth 
of a beautiful girl baby with abundant black hair 
and fine health." 

He wrote in November, 1906: — - 

" I may be relied on to keep on working here to the 
last, for my own pleasure if for nothing else, but the 
silent and gradual withdrawal from the world in 
which I was once so active does not trouble me at all. 
Nor have I the slightest fear of death, whether it 
be that something or nothing lies beyond it. The 
former seems to me altogether the more probable." 

These lines of Walt Whitman's were quoted by 

him with deep emotion, and he once said that he 

would like to have them engraved on his memorial 

stone: — 

"Joy, Shipmate, joy! 
(Pleas'd to my soul at death I cry) 
Our life is closed, our life begins, 
The long, long anchorage we leave, 
The ship is clear at last, she leaps, 
She swiftly courses from the shore, 
Joy, Shipmate, joy!" 

December 21, 1907, he wrote: — 

"This being the last day of my 84 years, I laid out 
some pleasant work during the coming year. As I 
have succeeded so with my postponed volume of my 
grandfather's memoir, I decided to carry out another 
old project and one very good for [elder years, viz. : 
to translate from the Greek the 'Birds of Aristo- 
phanes ' ... I enjoy life, love and work but should 
hardly care to be a nonagenarian." 



396 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"Dec. 22. Beautiful day begun with much sur- 
prise at my own advanced years, as there is very 
little inward change and it is generally thought I 
carry them well externally.' ' 

In the summer of 1908, he was attracted by an 
article in the "Dial" called the " Grandisonian 
Manner," and wrote this letter to the author: — 

"Dear Sir or Madam: — 

"You will pardon me for thus addressing you, 
when I tell you that I have just finished the whole 
series of Richardson's writings, including Diderot's 
commentary and all, having come upon them in one 
of the very best of the Massachusetts Public libraries 
in this attractive rural town [Ipswich]. All my life I 
have wished for time to renew Sir Charles, as I heard 
him read aloud by my mother in Cambridge in early 
boyhood ; and as I am now fast approaching my 85th 
birthday it is a delight to find the book quite reviving 
the old affection and the old associations of humor. 
The sense of personal nobleness about Sir Charles is 
renewed and also the wonderful and quite unique 
creation ... of Miss Grandison." 

In 1908 and 1909, short newspaper and magazine 
articles kept him busy, and he began a record of the 
Higginson family. In the latter year the collection 
of papers called "Carlyle's Laugh" was published. 
"Perhaps," he wrote, "my last book, when nearly 
eighty-six." In 19 10, he finished the editorship of 
the "Higginson Genealogy," revised his "Young 



THE CROWNING YEARS 397 

Folks' History," and noted, May 13, "Work almost 
at an end, perhaps for life." Still his pen never 
rested. He had, as he laughingly declared, "got into 
the habit of living," and there were always thoughts 
to be uttered either about live issues or departed 
contemporaries. Various lectures and addresses 
were given during this year. The diaries again fur- 
nish the record : — 

"Feb. 18, 1909. Evening — delightful and unex- 
pected singing from a party of colored singers. They 
came unseen by me and sang on the stairs, ' March- 
ing thro' Georgia ! ' They took me by entire surprise ; 
also bringing flowers." 

"May 4, 1910. To meeting of officers at Ameri- 
can House. Drove in alone. Was treated with curi- 
ous deferential attention and made a speech." 

"May 12. Pleasant and successful memorial 
meeting for Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 100th birthday. 
It was held in the house of my birth, the parlors 
crowded. Perhaps it was my last public meeting." 

" May 17. To Concord, Mass., to funeral of Judge 
Keyes [a classmate]." 

This excursion to Concord was violently opposed by 
his family, for he was obliged to go alone, his "nat- 
ural guardian" being absent; but he was inexorable; 
delighted to escape from feminine control; and came 
back triumphant. 

" May 26. At the notice of an hour or so prepared 
a talk on Theo. Parker for F.R.A." 



398 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

"May 27. To Boston for lunch of Free Religious 
Association at which I spoke for the last time. After- 
wards at Mrs. Howe's birthday reception. " 

"May 30. [Decoration Day.] To exercises in 
morning, marched with G.A.R. to chapel." 

"June 10, 1910. Closing the care and labor of 
nearly two years [Genealogy] — my last literary 
work properly so called. I am now the sixth on the 
list of Harvard graduates." 

One of the reforms which interested Colonel Hig- 
ginson in later years was Simplified Spelling. It must 
be confessed that he did not attempt to remodel his 
own way of writing, but he defined the movement as 
an effort to save the time of the busy world ; and he 
believed that to simplify "our great chaotic lan- 
guage" would make life easier for the stranger 
within our gates. 

His attitude toward Socialism, that word of many 
meanings, is indicated in the diary of 1908. " Foolish 
and exaggerated paper on me in Boston ' Post/ an- 
nouncing me as a Socialist." To a friend, he wrote 
in the same year: — 

" I have for many years had some leaning toward 
Socialism, I suppose, but the thing for which I 
joined the College Association was because I thought 
it very undesirable that colleges should ignore the 
very word as they almost uniformly did then; Har- 
vard being almost the only one which allowed it even 
to be mentioned. ... As for the name 'Socialist/ I 



THE CROWNING YEARS 399 

never either claimed or disclaimed it, regarding it as 
merely a feeler in the right direction and refusing any 
prominent place in the movement. I remember that 
Dr. Edward Hale and I both took this same position 
in a similar organization formed by Edward Bel- 
lamy in his time." 

His social creed, as stated in a letter dated 1859, 
would have equally fitted the succeeding years: — 

"Every year makes me, at least, more demo- 
cratic, with less reverence for the elect and more 
faith in the many." 

During the winter of 191 1, strength gradually 
failed, though interest in the affairs of life never 
flagged. In February, he read a paper on Dickens, 
with all his old spirit, before the Round Table, and 
in April r he attended a meeting of the Authors' Club 
in Milton. His last thoughts and directions were for 
others, and his last days painless and serene. On the 
evening of May 9, while soft spring airs lifted the 
curtains of his windows, his visible presence was 
quietly withdrawn. 

The farewell service was held by his own wish 
in the First Parish Church in Cambridge which 
claimed his allegiance from early association and 
from his warm regard for the pastor, Dr. Samuel M. 
Crothers, whom he had named, many years before, 
"the youth with the radiant brow." 



4 oo THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

The escort to the church was furnished by the 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson Post. The Loyal 
Legion conducted the military part of the service 
and the casket was borne up the aisle, to the sound 
of muffled drums, by young Negro soldiers. His 
verses, ''Waiting for the Bugle," and his hymn, "To 
Thine Eternal Arms, O God," were sung, the large 
gathering of friends, which included all classes of the 
community, joining in the latter. Aldrich's "Mon- 
ody on the Death of Wendell Phillips," beginning, — 

"One by one they go 
Into the unknown dark," — 

was read, this being a poem for which Colonel Hig- 
ginson had deeply cared. His ashes were deposited 
in the Cambridge Cemetery by the side of the little 
grave where he had strewn flowers on Decoration 
Day for thirty years. Of this spot, overlooking the 
Charles River Valley and commanding a view of the 
city of his birth, he had written : — 

"Shadows come and shadows go 

O'er the meadows wide; 
Twice each day, to and fro, 

Steals the river-tide; 
Each morn with sunrise-glow 

Gilds the green hillside." 

On the bright May morning of 191 1, when we 
stood there sorrowing, Dr. Crothers recalled a 
thought which had come to him in the church when 



THE CROWNING YEARS 401 

he heard the bugle sounding "Taps" and the dis- 
tant response. " I thought," he said, "of the passing 
of Mr. Valiant-for- truth in ' Pilgrim's Progress.' 'So 
he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him 
on the other side/ " 




BIBLIOGRAPHY 

This bibliography, based on a manuscript notebook of Thomas Went- 
worth Higginson, was originally compiled by the Cambridge Public 
Library, in 1906, in honor of the author's eighty -third birthday. This 
list has been revised and brought up to date by Colonel Higginson 's 
private secretary. It does not aim to include all of his writings, but 
only the more important ones. 

In the following list the place in parenthesis under the year indi- 
cates where Higginson resided during that time. 

Def. 1, 11, etc., after a title refers to the volume in the definitive edi- 
tion (1900) in which that title also appears. 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST 

1843 
(Cambridge) 

A History. [Poem.] (In Christian Examiner, Nov.) Signed H. 
Mrs. Child's Letters from New York. (In the Present, Nov. 15.) 
La Madonna di San Sisto. [Poem.] (In the Present, Dec. 15.) Def. VI. 

Same. (In Our Book. [A Salem Fair publication.] Sept., 1844.) 

Same. (In Longfellow. Estray. 1846.) 

1845 
(Cambridge) 

Lay of the Humble. [Poem.] (In New York Tribune, Oct. 1.) 
Tyrtaeus. [Poem.] (In Harbinger, Nov. 1.) 

Same. (In Liberator, Nov. 7.) 
Articles. (In Christian World, Jan., Feb.) Signed H. 

1846 

(Cambridge) 

Four hymns. (In Longfellow and Johnson. Book of Hymns.) 
The Railroad. [Poem.] (In Harbinger, April 4.) 
Holiness unto the Lord. [Sonnet.] (In Harbinger, June 20.) 
Hymn of Humanity. (In Harbinger, June 27.) 



4 04 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Hebe. [Poem.] (In Harbinger, July 4.) 

A Word of Hope. [Poem.] (In National Anti-Slavery Standard, 

Sept. 3.) 
Sonnet to William Lloyd Garrison. (In Liberty Bell.) 
(7>.) A Cradle Song, from the German of Ruckert. (In Harbinger, 

July 4.) 
Same, entitled Nature's Cradle Song. Def. VI. 
Two articles on licentiousness. (In Chronotype.) 

1847 
(Cambridge — Newburyport) 

Hymn. (In University of Cambridge Exercises at the Thirty-first Annual 
Visitation of the [Harvard] Divinity School, July 16.) Pph. Def. vi. 
Ordination Exercises, Sept. 15, with letter about ecclesiastical coun- 
cils. Pph. 

1848 
(Newburyport) 

"Man shall not live by bread alone ": Thanksgiving Sermon, New- 
buryport, Nov. 30. Pph. 
Fugitives' Hymn. (In Liberty Bell.) 

1849 
(Newburyport) 

The Twofold Being. [Poem.] (In Peabody, Elizabeth P., ed. 
^Esthetic Papers.) 

1850 
(Newburyport) 

Address to the Voters of the Third Congressional District of Massa- 
chusetts. Pph. 
Birthday in Fairyland. Pph. 

Same. (In Phillips. Laurel Leaves for Little Folks, 1903.) 
The Tongue: Two Practical Sermons. Pph. 

(With C. Cushing and F. L. Dimmick.) Address to the Citizens in 
Behalf of the Public Library [Newburyport]. Broadside. 

1851 
(Newburyport) 
Merchants: a Sunday Evening Lecture, Jan. Pph. 
Same. (In Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, Oct.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 405 

Newbury School Committee Report, 1850-51. Pph. 
Newburyport Free Evening School Report, 1851. Pph. 
To a Young Convert. [Poem.] (In Liberty Bell.) 
Same. (In his Afternoon Landscape. 1889.) 

1852 
(Newburyport — Worcester) 

Things New and Old: An Installation Sermon, Sept. 5. Pph. 

Address for Freedom Club, Worcester. Broadside. 

Address to the Citizens of Worcester. (Young Men's Library Associa- 
tion.) Broadside. 

Elegy without Fiction: Sermon, Oct. 31, suggested by the deaths of 
Webster and Rantoul. Broadside. 

Man and Nature. (In Christian Examiner, July.) 

(7>.) Forward. [Poem], from the German of Hoffman von Fallers- 
leben. (In Liberty Bell.) Def. vi. 
Same. (In Sword and Pen, Dec. 17.) 

1853 
(Worcester) 

Thalatta: A Book for the Seaside. 

Ed. anonymously by Higginson and Samuel Longfellow. Contains 
three of Higginson's poems. 

Address on the Operation of the Anti-Liquor Law, Boston, Jan 21. 

(State Temperance Committee Report.) Pph. 
Unitarian Autumnal Convention: A Sermon. Pph. 
Remarks before the Committee of the Constitutional Convention on 

the Qualification of Voters, June 3. Broadside. 
Am I my Brother's Keeper? Sermon. (In Liberty Bell.) 
Vindication of the Lord's Supper. Sermon. Pph. 
Conscience in the Counting- Room. (In Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, 

Jan.) 
Speech at Anti-Slavery Convention. (In Liberator, Feb. 11.) 
Woman and her Wishes: An Essay inscribed to the Massachusetts 

Constitutional Convention. (Several editions and reprinted in 

London.) Pph. 

Reprinted in London; originally written for the Una. 
November; December. [Poems.] (In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, 

April.) December. (In his Afternoon Landscape. 1889.) 
Moral Results of Slavery. (In Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, June.) 



406 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Lovers. [Poem.] (In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Sept.) 
Odensee. (In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Nov.) 

Same. (In Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places.) 
A Day in Carter Notch. (In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Dec.) 
Sermons to Children. (In Sunday School Gazette.) 
Speech at the Legislative Temperance Society. (In Life Boat.) 
(Ed.) Whole World's Temperance Convention Report. Pph. 

1854 
(Worcester) 

Does Slavery Christianize the Negro? (Anti-Slavery Tract, no. 4.) 
Massachusetts in Mourning: A Sermon preached in Worcester, June 

4. Pph. 
Scripture Idolatry: A Discourse. Pph. 
Same. (In Liberator, Oct. 6.) 
Reprinted in London. 
Letter. (In Hartford Bible Convention. Proceedings. Appendix.) 
Sermon on the Nebraska Bill. (In Liberator, Feb. 17.) 
Speech at Abington, Aug. 1 : Celebration of West Indian Emancipa- 
tion. (In Liberator, Aug. II.) 
African Proverbial Philosophy. (In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, 
Oct.) 

1855 
(Worcester — Winter in Fayal) 

Worcester School Committee Report, Dec. 31, 1854. 

Speech at New England Anti-Slavery Convention. (In Liberator, 

June 8.) 
Anti-Slavery Colporteurage. (In Liberator, Sept. 7.) Signed H. 
Speech at Anniversary of Boston Mob Convention. (In Liberator, 

Nov. 2.) 

At Fayal began a book, the Return of Faith, of which only one chapter 
was afterwards published as the Sympathy of Religions (1871). 

1856 
(Worcester — Trip to Kansas) 

Speech at Anniversary of West Indian Convention. (In Liberator, 

Aug. 8.) 
Going to Mount Katahdin. (In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Sept.) 

Purporting to be written by one of the ladies of the party. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 407 

Portugal's Glory and Decay. (In North American Review, Oct.) 
Letters from Kansas to New York Tribune. 

Published later as an anti-slavery tract (no. 20), under the title A 
Ride through Kansas, and also published independently. 

1857 
(Worcester) 

Speech. (In State Disunion Convention, Worcester, Jan 15. Proceed- 
ings?) Pph. and Broadside. 

Speech at Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slav- 
ery Society. (In Liberator, Jan. 16, and a Broadside.) 

Statement on Spiritual Manifestations, April 15. Broadside. 

The New Revolution: A Speech before the American Anti-Slavery 
Society, May 12. Pph. 

Circular Letter, July 8, calling for State Disunion Convention. Leaflet. 

Call for a Northern Convention at Cleveland, Oct. 28-29. Leaflet. 

1858 

(Worcester) 

Woman in Christian Civilization: New York Address. (In Religious 

Aspects of the Age. By various authors.) 
Saints and their Bodies. (In Atlantic Monthly, March.) Def. vi. 
Speech at Fifth Anniversary of the New York Anti-Slavery Society. 

(In Liberator, May 28.) 
Mademoiselle's Campaigns. (In Atlantic Monthly, July.) Def. VII. 
Waterlilies. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) Def. vi. 
Physical Courage. (In Atlantic Monthly, Nov.) 

Same. (In his Outdoor Papers. 1863.) 
Romance of History. (In Liberty Bell.) 
{Comp. with Mrs. Lucy Stone.) Woman's Rights Almanac for 1858. 

1859 
(Worcester) 

The Rationale of Spiritualism. Pph. 

The Results of Spiritualism : A Discourse, New York, March 6. Pph. 
Ought Women to learn the Alphabet? (In Atlantic Monthly, Feb.) 
Def. iv 

Also published as a tract. Boston, 1870, and Manchester, Eng., 1873, 
and as Woman's Suffrage Tracts, No. 4, Boston, 187 1. 



408 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Letter to a Dyspeptic. (In Atlantic Monthly, April.) 

Same. (In his Outdoor Papers. 1863.) 
A Charge with Prince Rupert. (In Atlantic Monthly, June.) Def. VII. 
Murder of the Innocents. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) 

Same. (In his Outdoor Papers. 1863.) 

i860 

(Worcester) 

A Visit to John Brown's Household in 1859. (In Redpath. Public Life 

of Captain John Brown.) Def. II. 
Maroons of Jamaica. (In Atlantic Monthly, Feb.) 

Same. (In his Travellers and Outlaws. 1889.) 
Maroons of Surinam. (In Atlantic Monthly, May.) 

Same. (In his Travellers and Outlaws. 1889.) 
Theodore Parker. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) Def. 11. 
Payal and the Portuguese. (In Atlantic Monthly, Nov.) Def. VI. 

1861 
(Worcester) 

Barbarism and Civilization. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) 

Same. (In his Outdoor Papers, 1863.) 
Gymnastics. (In Atlantic Monthly, March.) 

Same. (In his Outdoor Papers, 1863.) 
April days. (In Atlantic Monthly, April.) Def. VI. 
Denmark Vesey. (In Atlantic Monthly, June.) 

Same. (In his Travellers and Outlaws. 1889.) 
Ordeal by Battle. (In Atlantic Monthly, July.) 
Nat Turner's Insurrection. (In Atlantic Monthly, Aug.) 

Same. (In his Travellers and Outlaws. 1889.) 
My Outdoor Study. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) 

Same. (In his Outdoor Papers. 1863.) 
A New Counterblast. (In Atlantic Monthly, Dec.) 

Same. (In his Outdoor Papers. 1863.) 

1862 
(Worcester — Enlisted in September) 

Worcester Public Library, Second Annual Report. Pph. 
Snow. (In Atlantic Monthly, Feb.) Def. vi. , 

Letter to a Young Contributor. (In Atlantic Monthly, April.) 

Same. (In his Atlantic Essays. 1871.) 

Same. (In his Hints on Writing and Speech- Making. 1887.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 409 

Health of Our Girls. (In Atlantic Monthly, June.) 
Gabriel's Defeat. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) 

Same. (In his Travellers and Outlaws. 1889.) 
Life of Birds. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) Def. VI. 
Procession of the Flowers. (In Atlantic Monthly, Dec.) Def. VI. 

1863 

(War) 
Outdoor Papers. 

The Puritan Minister. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) 
Same. (In his Atlantic Essays. 1871.) 

1864 

(War — Newport) 

Regular and Volunteer Officers. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) 
A Night in the Water. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) Def. ill. 
Leaves from an Officer's Journal. (In Atlantic Monthly, Nov., Dec.) 
Book Notices. (In Atlantic Monthly, Friend of Progress.) 

1865 

(Newport) 

Leaves from an Officer's Journal. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) 
Bequest of Spiritualism. (In Friend of Progress, Feb.) 
Herbert Spencer. (In Friend of Progress, March.) 
Up the St. Mary's. (In Atlantic Monthly, April.) Def. ill. 
Fair Play the Best Policy. (In Atlantic Monthly, May.) 
Frances Power Cobbe. (In Friend of Progress, July.) 
Up the St. John's. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) Def. ill. 
Our Future Militia System. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) 
(Tr) Works of Epictetus. 

Same- Revised. 2 vols. 1890. 

Same. (In Cambridge Classics.) 
Book notices and editorials. (In Atlantic Monthly, Commonwealth, 
Friend of Progress, Independent.) 

1866 

(Newport) 

Children's Books of the Year. (In North American Review, Jan.) 
(Ed.) Harvard Memorial Biographies. 2 vols. 



410 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Same. Another edition. 2 vols. 1867. 
13 of these biographies were written by Higginson. 
Book notices and editorials. (In Atlantic Monthly, Independent.) 

1867 

(Newport) 

Newport Free Public Library. [Circular calling the attention of the 

community to its history, needs, etc.] Pph. 
Nonsense of it. Leaflet. 

Replies to arguments against woman suffrage. 
A Plea for Culture. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) 

Same. (In his Atlantic Essays. 1871.) 
Charlotte P. Hawes. (In Radical, Jan.) 
A Driftwood Fire. (In Atlantic Monthly, Feb.) Def. v. 
Out on Picket. (In Atlantic Monthly, March.) Def. ill. 
The Haunted Window. (In Atlantic Monthly, April.) 

Same. (In his Oldport Days. 1873.) 
Oldport in Winter. (In Atlantic Monthly, May.) Def. v. 
Negro Spirituals. (In Atlantic Monthly, June.) Def. III. 
An Artist's Dream. (In Atlantic Monthly, July.) 

Reprinted in Def. v, under the title An Artist's Creation. 
Up the Edisto. (In Atlantic Monthly, Aug.) Def. ill. 
Sunshine and Petrarch. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) Def. V. 
Literature as an Art. (In Atlantic Monthly, Dec.) 

Same. (In his Atlantic Essays. 1871.) 
Articles. (In Independent, Nation.) 

1868 
(Newport) 

Newport Free Library, President's Report, 1867-68. Pph. 

Lydia Maria Child; Margaret Fuller Ossoli. (In Eminent Women of 

the Age. By various writers.) 
Oldport Wharves. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) Def. v. 
The Pedigree of Liberalism. (In Radical, March.) 
The American Lecture System. (In Macmillarts Magazine, May.) 

Same. (In LittelVs Living Age, June 6.) 
{Adapted.) Child Pictures from Dickens. 
Book notices and editorials. (In Independent.) 

The book notices include a series, Live Americans, giving accounts of 
Longfellow, Lowell, and others. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 41 1 

1869 

(Newport) 

Malbone. 
Same. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.-June.) 

Ought Women to vote? 

Memoir of Dr. Thaddeus William Harris. Pph. Def. II. 
Reprinted from Harris's Entomological Correspondence. 

Preface. (In Erckmann-Chatrian. Mme. Therese. Tr. by C. L. For- 
ten.) 

Immortality: An Address [Boston], Feb. 21, 1869. (In Radical, March.) 

Greek Goddesses. (In Atlantic Monthly, July.) Def. vn. 

Tr. into French in the Revue Britannique, Oct., 1869, and also into 
modern Greek. 

Letters to Country Boys. (In Hearth and Home.) 

Book notices and editorials. (In Atlantic Monthly, Independent, New- 
York Tribune.) 

1870 

(Newport) 

Army Life in a Black Regiment. Def. hi. 

Same. Tr. into French under the title Vie militaire dans un regiment 
noir. Paris, 1884. 
Decoration Day Address, Mount Auburn, May 30. Broadside. 

Same. (In Reed and others, eds. Modern Eloquence, vol. 8. 1901.) 
Americanism in Literature. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) 

Same. (In his Atlantic Essays. 1871.) 
\ Shadow. (In Atlantic Monthly, July.) Def. VI. 
Footpaths. (In Atlantic Monthly, Nov.) Def. VI. 
Our Menagerie. (In Our Young Folks.) 
Swimming. (In Atlantic Almanac.) 

Book notices and editorials. (In Atlantic Monthly, Independent, Index, 
New York Tribune, Woman's Journal.) 

1871 
(Newport) 
Atlantic Essays. 
Madam Delia's Expectations. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) 

Same. (In his Oldport Days. 1873.) 
The Sympathy of Religions. (In Radical, Feb.) Def. vii. 

Published as a pamphlet, Boston, 1871 ; reprinted, London, 1872, and 
Boston, enlarged, 1876; reprinted in Unity Church-Door Pulpit, 



412 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chicago, June 16, 1885; reprinted in World's Parliament of Relig- 
ions, vol. 1, Chicago, 1893; tr. under the title, L'affinite des religions, 
by Mrs. Maria E. MacKaye, Paris, 1898. 

Plutarch's Morals. (In Radical, March.) 

Unpublished Letters from Theodore Parker. (In Radical, May.) 

Buddhist Path of Virtue. (In Radical, June.) 

Sappho. (In Atlantic Monthly, July.) Def. vn. 

An Evening; with Mrs. Hawthorne. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) Def. II. 

On an Old Latin Textbook. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) Def. vii. 

Book Notice of Verses, by "H. H." (In Atlantic Monthly. Recent 
Literature.) 

Editorials. (In Independent, Index, New York Tribune (including let- 
ters from Newport and from Harvard College), Woman's Journal.) 

1872 

(Newport) 

A Day of Scottish Games. (In Scribner's Monthly, Jan.) 
In a Wherry. (In Atlantic Monthly, Feb.) Def. v. 
Character of Buddha. (In Index, March 16.) 
Hawthorne's Last Bequest. (In Scribner's Monthly, Nov.) 
Editorials. (In Index, Woman's Journal.) 

1873 
(Newport) 
Oldport Days. 
Are you a Christian? Pph. 

Same. (In Index, Jan. 25.) 
Higher Education of Woman: A Paper before the Social Science Con- 
vention, May 14. Pph. 
Intercollegiate Scholarships. (In Scribner's Monthly, Jan.) 
Editorials. (In Index, Woman's Journal.) 

1874 
(Newport) 

The Baby of the Regiment. (In Whittier, comp. Child Life in Prose.) 

Reprinted from Army Life in a Black Regiment. 1870. 
How the American Revolution Opened. (In Oliver Optic's Magazine.) 

Same. (In Young Folks' History of the United States. 1875.) 
Charles Dudley Warner. (In Scribner's Monthly, Jan.) 
Decoration. [Poem.] (In Scribner's Monthly, June.) Def. VI. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 413 

Old Dutch Times in New York. (In St. Nicholas, Sept.) 

Same. (In Young Folks' History of the United States. 1875.) 
Editorials. (In Independent, Woman's Journal.) 

1875 
(Newport) 

English Statesmen. (Brief Biographies of European Public Men Series.) 

Edited the 3 other volumes in this series. 
Young Folks' History of the United States. 

Tr. into French (2 editions), Paris, 1875; into German, Stuttgart, 
1876; into Italian, 1888. 

Questions on Higginson's Young Folks 1 History of the United States. 

For the use of teachers. Pph. 
Life of Emerson. (In Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia.) 
The Word Philanthropy. (In Free Religious Association. Freedom 

and Fellowship in Religion.) Def. VI. 
Introductory Address, Free Religious Association. Pph.. 
The Gymnasium and Gymnastics in Harvard College. (In Vaille and 

Clark, comp. Harvard Book, vol. 2.) 

1876 
(Newport) 

History of the Public School System in Rhode Island. (In History of 

Public Education in Rhode Island, 1 636-1 876.) 
A Moonglade. (In Laurel Leaves. Pub. by W. F. Gill.) Def. v. 
Speech at memorial service for Dr. S. G. Howe. (In Howe, Mrs. Julia 

Ward. Memoir of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe.) Def. 11. 
{With Thomas H. Clarke.) A Sketch of the Public Schools in the City 

of Newport. (In History of Public Education in Rhode Island.) 
Childhood's Fancies. (In Scribner's Monthly, Jan.) 
Lowell's Among my Books. Second Series. (In Scribner's Monthly, 

March. Culture and Progress.) ? 
Story of the Signing. [Declaration of Independence.] (In Scribner's 

Monthly, July.) 

The paper Provencal Song mistakenly attributed to Higginson in 
Galaxy, April, was by Mrs. Maria E. MacKaye. 

1877 
(Newport) 

[Education in] Rhode Island. (In Kiddle and Schem. Cyclopcedia of 
Education) 



4 i4 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Intercollegiate Literary Association Report. Pph. 

(Comp.) A Book of American Explorers. (In Young Folks' Series.) 

Book notices and editorials. (In Nation, Woman's Journal.) 

A portion of the book notices jn the Nation were called Poetry of ths 

Month, later entitled Recent Poetry. The reviews were continuec 

to Feb., 1904. 

1878 

(Cambridge — Trip to Europe) 

Speech at Conference of Liberal Thinkers, London, June 13. Pph. 
Letter on Physical and Intellectual Habits. (In Holbrook. Hygient 

of the Brain Nerves.) 
R. G. White. (In Atlantic Monthly, May. Contributors' Club.) 
Some War Scenes Revisited. (In Atlantic Monthly, July.) 

Reprinted in Def. in under the title Fourteen Years After. 
Saxe Holm's Botany. (In Atlantic Monthly, July. Contributors' Club.) 
An Irish Heart. (In Scribner's Monthly, Dec.) 
Editorials. (In Woman's Journal.) 

1879 
(Cambridge, from this time) 

Short Studies of American Authors. 
First published in the Literary World. 

Intercollegiate Literary Association: Its History, Aims, and Results. 

Pph. 
Speech at Frothingham Festival, New York, April 22. Pph. 
Joseph Cook. (In Atlantic Monthly, March. Contributors' Club.) 
New England Life. (In Atlantic Monthly, June. Contributors' Club.) 
Recent Essays. (In North American Review, July.) 
Speech at Library Convention in Boston, June-July. (In Library 

Journal, Sept.-Oct.) 
(With others.) Other Side of the Woman Question. (In North 

American Review, Nov.) 
Editorials. (In Woman's Journal.) 

1880 
(In Legislature) 

From the Death of Winthrop to Philip's War. (In Winsor, ed. Me- 
morial History of Boston, vol. 1.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 415 

A Revolutionary Congressman on Horseback. (In Scribner's Monthly », 
Jan.) 
Same. (In his Travellers and Outlaws, 1889.) 
Dwelling-Places. [Poem.] (In Scribner's Monthly, March.) Def. VI. 
The Reed Immortal. [Poem.] (In Atlantic Monthly, Aug.) Def. VI. 
Two Anti-Slavery Leaders. [William Lloyd Garrison and Levi Coffin.] 

(In International Review, Aug.) 
Howells's Undiscovered Country. (In Scribner's Monthly, Sept.) 
A Search for the Pleiades. (In Atlantic Monthly, Nov.) Def. VI. 
Editorials. (In Harvard Register, Woman's Journal.) 

1881 
Common Sense about Women. 

Reprinted in London, 1890, 4th ed., with some omissions. Tr. into 
German from the English ed. under the title Die Frauenfrage und 
der gesunde Menschenver stand, by Eugenie Jacobi, 1895. 

Young Folks' History of the United States. 2d ed. 

Printed in raised type by the Howe Memorial Press, Perkins Insti- 
tution and Massachusetts School for the Blind. 

French and Indian Wars. (In Winsor, ed. Memorial History of Bos- 

ton, vol. 11.) 
Address at the Celebration of the Battle of Cowpens, Spartanburg, 

South Carolina, May 11. Pph. 
Same. (In Reed and others, eds. Modern Eloquence, vol. 8. 1901.) 
Oration. (In Exercises in Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the 

Settlement of Cambridge, December 28, 1880.) 
French Radical Eloquence. (In Reed, ed. The City and the Sea, with 

other Cambridge Contributions in aid of the Hospital Fund.) 
Memorial Ode [May 30]. (With Long's Oration.) Pph. Def. VI. 

Also printed separately. 
Notice of Benjamin Peirce. (In King, comp. Memorial Collection.) 
Carlyle's Laugh. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) 

Reprinted in Carlyle's Laugh and Other Surprises, 1909. 
Sellar's Roman Poets of the Republic. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) 
Short March with the Guard. [Verses.] (In Sword and Pen, Dec. 9.) 
Book notices and editorials. (In Christian Register, Literary World, 

Woman's Journal.) 

1882 

Young Folks' History of the United States. New ed., with additional 
chapters. 



416 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Speech at Rev. Samuel Johnson's funeral. (In Samuel Johnson: A 

Memorial.) Pph. 
(With Others.) Testimony on Charles River Railroad, Feb. 13. Pph. 
The Brook Farm Period. (In Demorest's Monthly, July.) 
First Americans. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, Aug.) 
Visit of the Vikings. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, Sept.) 
Spanish Discoverers. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, Oct.) 

The last three articles were published later in Higginson's Larger 
History of the United States (1885), and in Higginson and Mac- 
Donald's History of the United States (1905). 

The Baby Sorceress. [Sonnet.] (In Century Magazine, Nov.) Def. VI. 
Editorials and other articles. (In Index, Nation, Woman's Journal.) 

1883 

Dedicatory Address at unveiling of the statue of John Bridge, Sept. 

20, 1882. (In Cambridge City Document, 1883.) 
Why do Children dislike History? (In Methods of Teaching History. 

Hall's Pedagogical Library, vol. 1.) 
Report on the Parker Library. (In Boston Public Library. 31st 

Annual Report.) Pph. 
Old English Seamen. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, Jan.) 
French Voyageurs. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, March.) 
Negro Race in America. (In Atlantic Monthly, April.) 
Conway's Emerson at Home and Abroad. (In Century Magazine, April.) 
"An English Nation." (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, April.) 
The Hundred Years' War. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, June.) 
Second Generation of English in America. (In Harper's Monthly 

Magazine, July.) 
The British Yoke. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, Aug.) 
Dawning of Independence. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, Oct.) 

The foregoing articles in Harper's Magazine were published later in 
Higginson's Larger History of the United States (1885), and in Hig- 
ginson and MacDonald's History of the United States (1905). 

Lodge's Webster. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) 
Book notices and articles. (In Nation.) 

1884 

[Life of] Margaret Fuller Ossoli. (In American Men of Letters.) 
Wendell Phillips. Pph. Def, 11. 

Reprinted from the Nation, Feb. 7, 1884. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 417 

Young Men's Party. Pph. 

Reprinted from the New York Evening Post, Oct. 4, 1884. 
Palmer's Odyssey. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) 

1885 

Larger History of the United States. 

Oration. (In Memorial Services in the City of Cambridge on the Day of 

the Funeral of General Grant, Aug. 8.) Pph. 
Reviewed Julian Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife. (In 

Atlantic Monthly, Feb.) 
American Flash Language in 1793. (In Science, May 8.) 
Lowell in England. (In Literary World, June 27.) 
"H. H." (In Critic, Aug. 22.) 

Mrs. Helen Jackson, "H. H." (In Century Magazine, Dec.) Def. 11. 
{With others) Is Boston losing its Literary Prestige? (In Brooklyn 

Magazine, Dec.) 

Began a series of articles, entitled Women and Men, in Harper's Bazar. 

1886 

The Monarch of Dreams. Def. v. 

"A German translation of this story appeared in the New York Freie 
Zeitung of Aug. 18, 1889, the translator being Louis Wagele and 
the title Der Monarch seiner Trdume. It is said to have also ap- 
peared in French, but no particulars are known." 

William Lloyd Garrison. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) Def. 11. 
Grant. (In Atlantic Monthly, March, Sept.) Def. 11. 
How I Was Educated. (In Forum, April.) 
Same. Pph. 
Republished in 1887 in a volume entitled The College and the 
Church. 

To the Memory of "H. H." [Sonnet.] (In Century Magazine, May.) 

Def. vi. 
Reminiscences of Helen Jackson. (In New Princeton Review, July.) 
Old Salem Sea-Captains. (In Harper's Monthly Magazine, Sept.) 

Same. (In his Travellers and Outlaws. 1889.) 
E. P. Whipple. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) 

Same. (In his Short Studies of American Authors.) 
Mr. Hamerton on Literature in a Republic. (In Harvard Monthly, 

Dec.) 
Articles. (In Critic, Independent, Good Cheer, Harper's Bazar, 

Nation.) 



418 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1887 

Hints on Writing and Speech-making. 
Women and Men. 

Reprinted from Harper 's Bazar. 
For Self -Respect and Self-Protection: Speech at the Annual Meeting 

of the American Woman Suffrage Association, Phila., Nov. 1. 

Pph. and leaflet. 
Preface. (In Stevens. Around the World on a Bicycle.) 
Speeches, letters, etc., 1853-87. (In Stanton and others, eds. History of 

Woman Suffrage. 4 vols.) 
Unsolved Problems in Woman Suffrage. (In Forum, Jan.) 

Reprinted later as a pamphlet. 
Mr. Hamerton on Literature in a Republic. (In Harvard Monthly, 

Jan.) 
Hayne, Paul Hamilton. (In Chautauquan, Jan.) 
Lanier, Sidney. (In Chautauquan, April.) • 
A Missent Letter. (In Strawbridge and Clothier's Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 

2. Summer no.) 
Same. (In Woman's Journal, Aug. 27.) 
Sub Pondere Crescit. [Sonnet.] (In Century Magazine, Sept.) Def. VI. 
A June Migration. (In Appalachia, Dec.) 
Articles. (In Harper's Bazar, Independent.) 

1888 

Short Studies of American Authors. Rev. and enl. 

Address. (In Reunion of the Free-Soilers of 1848-1852, Boston, June 

28.) Pph. 
John Brown. (In Appletons' Cyclopcedia of American Biography.) 
English Sources of American Dialect. (In American Antiquarian 

Society. Proceedings. New series, vol. 4.) 
Howell's Modern Italian Poets. (In Nation, Jan. 5.) 
A Precursor of Hawthorne [William Austin]. (In Independent. March 

29.) 
English and American Manners. (In Forum, July.) 
Speech. (In Protest against the Majority Report on the Employment and 

Schooling of Children, and against any Legislative Interference with 

Private Schools, Massachusetts House Document, No. iq.) Pph. 

1889 

The Afternoon Landscape: Poems and Translations. 
Travellers and Outlaws. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 419 

Three Outdoor Papers. (Riverside Literature Series.) Pph. 

Lowell in Cambridge. (In Critic, Feb. 23.) 

Vestis Angelica. [Poem.] (In Scribners Magazine, March.) Def. VI. 

Nils's Garden. [A story.] (In Century Magazine, July.) 

Ode to a Butterfly. [Poem.] (In Century Magazine, Nov.) Def. VI. 

1890 

In a Fair Country: Essays from Outdoor Papers. Illustrated by Irene 

E. Jerome. 
Cambridge Public Library: Plan reported to the Book Committee. 

Pph. 
Cambridge : Literature. (In Hurd, comp. History of Middlesex County, 

vol. 1.) 
Opening Address. (In Browning Society of Boston. Memorial to 

Robert Browning, Jan. 28.) 
A World Literature. (In Century Magazine, Jan.) 
Letter Relating to the Cambridge Public Library. (In Cambridge 

Tribune, March 15.) 
Richard Henry Dana. (In Cambridge Tribune, Dec. 20.) 
{Ed. with Mrs. Ellen H. Bigelow.) American Sonnets. Preface by 

Higginson. 
(Ed. with Mrs. Mabel L. Todd.) Poems, by Emily Dickinson. Pre- 
face by Higginson. 

1891 

Life of Francis Higginson. (In Makers of America.) 

On the Steps of the Hall (University Hall, Aug. 28, 1837). Privately 
printed. Leaflet. 
Poem inscribed to the class of 1841, Harvard University. 

Address at the 100th Anniversary, Jan 24. (In Massachusetts His- 
torical Society. Proceedings.) 

Landmarks of Progress. Address at the 40th Anniversary of the 
National Woman's Rights Convention. (In Woman's Journal, 
Feb. 14.) 

Rabiah's Defence. [Poem.] (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) Def. VI. 

Emily Dickinson's Letters. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) 

The Two Lessons. [Sonnet.] (In Century Magazine, Dec.) Def. VI. 

Glimpses of Authors. (In Brains, Oct. 15-Jan. 1, 1892.) 

(Ed. with Mrs. Mabel L. Todd.) Poems, by Emily Dickinson. 2d 
series. 

(Ed. in part.) The Rindge Gifts to Cambridge. [City publication.] 

Articles. (In Harper's Bazar, Independent.) 



420 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1892 
Concerning All of Us. 
The New World and the New Book : An Address delivered before the 

Nineteenth Century Club of New York City, Jan. 15, 1891, with 

kindred essays. 
Literature in a Republic: A Lecture. (In Reed and others, eds. Modern 

Eloquence, vol. 5.) 
Tribute to Lowell. (In Massachusetts Commandery of the Loyal 

Legion. In Memoriam.) Pph. 
Same. (In Cambridge Tribune, Feb. 20.) 
Youth and Literary Life. (In Lectures to Young Men, New York.) 

Pph. 
English Ancestry of the Higginson Family. (In New England Historical 

and Genealogical Register, April.) 
An Egyptian Banquet. [Sonnet.] (In Scribner's Magazine, April.) 

Def. vi. 
The Sleeping Car. [Poem.] (In Century Magazine, May.) Def. VI. 
School, College, Library. (In Cosmopolitan Magazine, May.) 
A World Outside of Science. (In New World, Dec.) 
Same. Pph. 

Same. (In his Book and Heart. 1897.) 
(With Mrs. Florence W. Jaques.) List of battles and casualties of 

Massachusetts regiments during the war of the Rebellion. (In 

New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Jan.) 
Articles. (In Nation.) 

1893 

Cambridge Public Library Report. Pph. 

Straight Lines or Oblique Lines? (In Woman Suffrage Leaflet, Nov.) 
(With Mrs. Mary T. Higginson.) Such as They Are: Poems. 
(With Edward Channing.) English History for American Readers. 
Speech on the Turning-Point in the History of the Parliament of 

Religions. (In World's Parliament of Religions, vol. 1.) 
Articles. (In Boston Evening Transcript, Nation, Public Opinion.) 

1894 

Cambridge Public Library Report. Pph. 

Note [to] Books and Reading, by Sir John Lubbock. (In Woman's 

Book, vol. 2.) 
Introduction. (In Speeches and Addresses of William E. Russell.) 
How to Use a Public Library. (In Golden Rule, Sept. 27.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 421 

The Prospect Union and the Public Library. (In Prospect Union Re- 
view, Oct. 24). 
How to Read Magazines. (In Golden Rule, Nov. 15.) 

1895 

Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the War of 1861-65. 

Vol. 2. 
The Fairy Coursers. [Poem.] (In Cambridge Sketches, by Cambridge 

authors.) 
The Woman who Most Influenced Me. (In Ladies' Home Journal, 

Oct.) 
A Young Girl's Library. (In Ladies' Home Journal, Nov.) 
Articles. (In Boston Evening Transcript, Harper's Bazar, Nation, et at.) 

1896 

Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the War of 1861-65. 

Vol. 1. 
Prefatory note. (In Aspinwall. Short Stories for Short People.) 
The School of Jingoes. (In Essays from the Chap-Book.) 
Life in Cambridge Town. (In Gilman, ed. Cambridge of i8q6.) 
Octavius Brooks Frothingham. (In New World, March.) 
A Keats Manuscript. (In Forum, June.) 
Same. (In his Book and Heart. 1897.) 
The Romance of a Brown-Paper Parcel. (In Century Magazine, Aug.) 
A Bookshelf in the Kitchen. (In Ladies' Home Journal, Nov.) 
Cheerful Yesterdays. (In Atlantic Monthly, Nov.-Dec.) Def. I. 
Early Free Churches. (In Free Church Record, April.) 
{Comp.) Rough list in manuscript of his Galatea collection of books, in 
the Boston Public Library, relating to women. With newspaper 
scraps, printed titles, and a supplementary accessions catalogue. 

A comment on the Galatea collection may be found in the Boston 
Evening Transcript, Feb. 18, 1896. 

{Comp.) Scrapbook of periodical articles, newspaper cuttings, and 

portraits relating to James Russell Lowell. 

Presented to the Cambridge Public Library, 1896. 
Articles. (In Boston Evening Transcript, Harper's Bazar, Harper's 

Weekly, Independent, Nation, Outlook, Youth's Companion, et at.) 

1897 
Book and Heart. 
Procession of the Flowers, and kindred papers. Def. VI. 



422 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Biography of Browning's Fame. (In Browning Society of Boston. 

Papers.) 
Educational Conditions and Problems. [Speech at the Annual Meeting 

of the Harvard Teachers' Association, March 6.] (In Educational 

Review, May.) 
Cheerful Yesterdays. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.-May.) Def. I. 
Colored Troops under Fire. (In Century Magazine, June.) 
Gottingen and Harvard Eighty Years Ago. (In Harvard Graduates' 

Magazine, Sept.) 
Literary London Twenty Years Ago. (In Atlantic Monthly, Dec.) 
Articles. (In Nation, et al.) 

1898 

Cheerful Yesterdays. Def. 1. 

Cambridge Public Library Report. Pph. 

Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic. 

{With Edward Channing.) English History for Americans. 

New edition of their English History for American Readers. 1893. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. [Preface.] (In Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
New ed.) 

[Sketches of] Brown, Cooper, andThoreau. (In Carpenter, ed. Ameri- 
can Prose.) 

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) 

On the Outskirts of Public Life. (In Atlantic Monthly, Feb.) 

The First Black Regiment. (In Outlook, July 2.) 

Anti-Slavery Days. (In Outlook, Sept. 3.) 

Articles. (In Nation, Outlook, et al.) 



Contemporaries. Def. 11. 



1899 
Contents: 



Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Amos Bronson Alcott. 

Theodore Parker. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 

Walt Whitman. 

Sidney Lanier. 

An Evening with Mrs. Hawthorne. 

Lydia Maria Child. 

Helen Jackson ("H. H.") 

John Holmes. 

Thaddeus William Harris. 

A Visit to John Brown's Household in 1859. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 423 

William Lloyd Garrison. 

Wendell Phillips. 

Charles Sumner. 

Dr. Howe's Anti-Slavery Career. 

Ulysses Simpson Grant. 

The Eccentricities of Reformers. 

The Road to England. 

Old Cambridge. 

Contents: 
I. Old Cambridge. 
II. Old Cambridge in Three Literary Epochs. 

III. Holmes. 

IV. Longfellow. 
V. Lowell. 

11 Where Liberty is Not, there is My Country." (Anti-Imperialist 
Leaflet, no. 19.) 
Reprinted from Harper's Bazar, Aug. 12, 1899. 

(With William Taggard Piper.) Cambridge Public Library Report. 

Pph. 
Wendell Phillips. (In Encyclopedia Britannica.) 
My Literary Neighbors. (In Outlook, Feb. 4.) 
His Brother's Brother [John Holmes]. (In Atlantic Monthly, Aug.) 
The Road to England. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) 
Articles. (In Nation, Outlook, et al.) 

1900 
[Writings. Definitive ed.] 7 vols. 
Vol. I . Cheerful Yesterdays. 

Chapters first printed in the Atlantic Monthly. 

2. Contemporaries. 

Most of the sketches previously printed. 

3. Army Life in a Black Regiment. 
Previously printed. 

4. Women and the Alphabet. 

Chiefly articles printed in Harper's Bazar. 

5. Studies in Romance. 

Includes Malbone. — The Monarch of Dreams. — Oldport Days 
[part of]. 

6. Outdoor Studies. 

Mostly previously printed essays and poems. 



424 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

7. Studies in History and Letters. 
Most of these essays previously printed. 

The Alliance between Pilgrim and Puritan in Massachusetts: An Ad- 
dress delivered before the Old Planters' Society, Salem, June 9, 
1900. Pph. 

Reasons for Voting for Bryan. Leaflet. 

Reprinted from the Springfield Daily Republican, Sept., 1900. 

{With W. L. Garrison and G. S. Boutwell.) How Should a Colored 
Man Vote in 1900? Leaflet. 
Reprinted from the Boston Herald, Oct. II, 1900. 

The Reoccupation of Jacksonville in 1893. (In Mass. Commandery 
of the Loyal Legion. Civil War Papers, vol. 2.) 

Addresses and Remarks. (In Free Religious Association. Proceedings, 
1867-1900.) 

Octavius Brooks Frothingham. (In Prophets of Liberalism: Six Ad- 
dresses before the Free Religious Association of America. Pph.) 

Education and the Public Library. [Typewritten.] (Boston Public 
Library. Free Lectures, 1900.) 

Articles. (In Independent, Outlook.) 

1901 

American Orators and Oratory: Being a Report of Lectures delivered 

at Western Reserve University. 

The edition is limited to 500 copies. 
{With William J. Rolfe.) Cambridge Public Library Report. Pph. 
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. (In Poet-Lore, April-June.) 
Articles. (In Boston Evening Transcript, Independent, Outlook, et al.) 

1902 

[Life of] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (In American Men of Letters.) 
[Life of] John Greenleaf Whittier. (In English Men of Letters.) 
Horace Elisha Scudder: A Memorial. (In American Academy of Arts 

and Sciences. Proceedings.) Pph. 
Speech at Winchester, Eng., Sept. 18, 1901. (InBowker. King Alfred's 

Millenary.) 
American Genius and Life. {With others.) (In The Most American 

Books, in Outlook, Dec. 6.) 
{Ed.) Story without an End. By F. W. Carove; tr. by Sarah Austin. 

Preface by Higginson. 
{Ed.) Walks with Ellery Channing. [Extracts from manuscript diaries 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 425 

of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Introduction by Higginson.] (In 

Atlantic Monthly, July.) 
Reviewed Scudder's Life of Lowell. (In Harvard Graduates' Magazine, 

March.) 
Articles. (In Independent, Outlook.) 

1903 

James Elliot Cabot : A Memorial. (In American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences. Proceedings.) Pph. 

{With Mrs. Margaret Higginson Barney.) [Papers.] (In Heath 
Readers.) 

{With Henry Walcott Boynton.) Reader's History of American Litera- 
ture. 

Based upon a course of lectures, "American Literature in the Nine- 
teenth Century," given by Higginson at the Lowell Institute, Bos- 
ton, 1903. They were reported in part in the Boston Evening Tran- 
script under the following titles and dates: American Literature, 
Jan. 6; The Philadelphia Period, Jan. 9; Irving and Cooper, Jan. 13; 
Boston Takes the Lead, Jan. 16; Concord Litterateurs, Jan. 20; 
Influence of the South, Jan. 23; Writers from the West, Jan. 27; 
Our Literary Obstacles, Jan. 30. 

Personality of Emerson. (In Outlook, May 23.) 

Address. (In Centenary of the Birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord, 

May 25.) 
(TV.) Fifteen Sonnets of Petrarch. 

The introduction is based essentially upon Sunshine and Petrarch 
(1867), which originally included most of the sonnets in this vol- 
ume. This edition consists of 430 numbered copies. 

Articles. (In Christian Endeavor World, Independent, Outlook, Success.) 

1904 

Address on Decoration Day in Sanders Theatre [Cambridge], May 30. 

Pph. 
The Sunny Side of the Transcendental Period. (In Atlantic Monthly, 

Jan.) 
English and American Cousins. (In Atlantic Monthly, Feb.) 
Books Unread. (In Atlantic Monthly, March.) 
Aristocracy of the Dollar. (In Atlantic Monthly, April.) 
Intensely Human. (In Atlantic Monthly, May.) 
Butterflies and Poetry. (In Atlantic Monthly, June.) 
Articles. (In Boston Evening Transcript, Encyclopedia Americana, 



426 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Nation, Outlook, The Reader, Sunday Magazine, [Wanamaker's] 
Book News.) 

1905 

Part of a Man's Life. 

George Frisbie Hoar. (In American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 
Proceedings.) Pph. 

Letter Relating to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Leaflet. 
Reprinted from Harper's Weekly, July 14. 

(With William MacDonald.) History of the United States. 

Enlarged ed. of Higginson's Larger History of the United States. 

Introduction. (In Capen. Country Homes of Famous Americans.) 

Introduction. (In Sinclair. The Aftermath of Slavery.) 

American Audiences. (In Atlantic Monthly, Jan.) 

The Close of the Victorian Epoch. (In Atlantic Monthly, March.) 

English Literature in the Last Half of the Nineteenth Century: lec- 
tures delivered at the Lowell Institute, Boston, 1905. 
Not published, but reported in part in the Boston Evening Transcript 
under the following titles and dates: A Few English Poets, March 1; 
Carlyle, Froude, Ruskin, March 8; Darwin's Domesticity, March 
15; Landor and his Class, March 22; Recent English Letters, 
March 29; Browning and Tennyson, April 5. 

Letters of Mark. (In Atlantic Monthly, April.) 

Wordsworthshire. (In Atlantic Monthly, July.) 

William James Rolfe. (In Outlook, July 22.) 

Literature as a Pursuit; An Address before the Harvard Ethical 
Society, Cambridge, Mass. (In Critic, Aug.) 

History in Easy Lessons. (In Atlantic Monthly, Sept.) 

The Cowardice of Culture. (In Atlantic Monthly, Oct.) 

The above six papers in the Atlantic Monthly, together with the six 
published in the same periodical for 1904, form the volume "Part 
of a Man's Life." 

Garrison and Whittier. (In Independent, Dec.) 

The Place of Whittier Among Poets. (In The Reader's Magazine, Feb.) 

(Ed.) The Hawthorne Centenary Celebration at the Wayside, Con- 
cord, Mass., July 4-7, 1904. 
Contains Higginson's address, July 4, as presiding officer of that day. 

Articles. (In Christian Endeavor World, Critic, Independent, Nation, 
Outlook.) 

1906 

Address delivered at the celebration of the 275th anniversary of the 
founding of Cambridge. Dec. 21, 1905. [Pamphlet, reprinted 
from the Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, 1.] 






BIBLIOGRAPHY 427 

Introduction. (In Braithwaite, ed. Book of Elizabethan Verse.) 

A Great Poet in her Prime: Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (In [Wana- 

maker's] Book News, March.) 
A Reunited Anglo-Saxondom. (In Critic, April.) 
"Gentlemen by Profession." (In Independent, April 12.) 
(With Others.) The Creative Spirit in Literature. (In Outlook, Nov. 

24.) 
Mrs. Howe and her Commentator. (In Contributors' Club, Atlantic 

Monthly, Oct.) 
Cambridge Eighty Years Since. (In Proceedings of the Cambridge 

Historical Society, vol. 11.) 
Reminiscences of John Bartlett. (In Proceedings of the Cambridge 

Historical Society, vol. 1.) 

1907 

Life and Times of Stephen Higginson. 

Massasoit. (In Massasoit Memorial.) Pph. 

Julia Ward Howe. (In Outlook, Jan. 26.) 

The Early Days of Longfellow. (In Book News Monthly, Feb.) 

The Youth of Longfellow. (In Independent, Feb. 21.) 

Literature (1857-1907). (In Atlantic Monthly, Nov.) 

John Greenleaf Whittier. (In Independent, Dec. 19.) 

Literature at Off Tide. (With others.) (In Literature or Life, in Outlook, 
Nov. 23.) 

Address at Longfellow Memorial Meeting. (In Proceedings of Cam- 
bridge Historical Society, vol. 11.) 

Edward Atkinson. (In Proceedings of American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, vol. xlii.) 

Louis Agassiz. (In Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, 
vol. 11.) 

(Ed.) Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion. By Theodore 
Parker. Preface by Higginson. 

Articles and addresses. (In Christian Endeavor World, Cambridge 
Tribune, Boston Evening Transcript, Youth's Companion.) 



Things Worth While. (In Art of Life Series, Griggs ed.) 

Most of the sketches previously printed. 
Religious Progress in the Last Two Generations. Pph. 
Address at the Fiftieth Anniversary of Cambridge Public Library. 

(In History of the Cambridge Public Library.) 
Edmund Clarence Stedman. (In Independent, Jan. 30.) 



428 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Edmund Clarence Stedman. (In Atlantic Monthly, March.) 
Edward Everett Hale. (In Book News Monthly, Aug.) 
Republican Aristocracy. (In Harper's Monthly, July.) 
First Steps in Literature. (In New England Magazine, Oct.) 
Emerson's "Footnote Person [Alcott]." (In Putnam's Monthly and 

The Reader, Oct.) 
Charles Eliot Norton. (In Outlook, Oct. 31.) 

1909 

Carlyle's Laugh, and Other Surprises. 

Most of the sketches previously printed. 

Preface to A Mother's List of Books for Children, by Gertrude Wild 

Arnold. 
Old Newport Days. (In Outlook, Apr. 17.) 
The Future Life. (In Harper's Bazar, May.) 

Afterwards, 19 10, in a book (with others) as In After Days. 
Edward Everett Hale. (In Outlook, June 19.) 
(Ed.) White Slaves in Africa. (In North American Review, July.) 

Preface. 
(Ed.) A Poem of the Olden Time, by his Aunt Nancy. Note by 

Higginson. 
Articles. (In Boston Evening Transcript.) 

1910 

(With others.) In After Days: Thoughts on the Future Life. 
Introduction. (In Austin's Peter Rugg, the Missing Man.) 
William J. Rolfe. (In Emerson College Magazine, Nov.) 
(Ed.) Descendants of the Reverend Francis Higginson. (Genealogy.) 
Articles. (In Congregationalist and Christian World, Boston Evening 
Transcript.) 

1911 

Dickens in America. (Appeared after Col. Higginson's Death in 
Outlook, May 20.) 



INDEX 



Afternoon Landscape, An, poems, 319, 418. 

Agassiz, Prof. Louis, 164; described, 96. 

Alcott, A. Bronson, 68, 277; on Higginson's 
literary methods, 155. 

Alexander, Mrs., 352. 

Alfred, King of England, millenary celebra- 
tion of, 360-62. 

American Sonnets, 319, 369, 419. 

Andrew, Gov. John A., 203, 210; and Higgin- 
son's plan, 204, 205. 

Anti-Slavery Society, Mass., Higginson 
speaks at, 180, 181; Phillips speaks at, 
201; Emerson speaks at, 201. 

Appleton Anne, marries Capt. Storrow, 3. 
See also Storrow, Anne Appleton. 

Appleton, Fanny, 26. See also Mrs. H. W. 
Longfellow. 

April Days, 157, 408. 

Army Life in a Black Regiment, 227, 230, 
237, 363, 411, 423; at work on, 282. 

Arnim, Bettina von, Higginson reads, 343~ 
46. 

Arnold, Edward, Higginson visits, 331. 332. 

Arnold, Matthew, and Higginson, 301. 

Atlantic Essays, 156, 157, 411. 

Baby of the Regiment, The, 237, 412. 

Barney, Margaret Dellinger, granddaughter 
of T. W. H., 394. 395- 

Barney, Margaret Higginson, daughter of 
T. W. H. See Higginson, Margaret Waldo. 

Barney, Wentworth Higginson, grandson 
of T. W. H., 394- 

Bartol, Rev. Cyrus A., honors Higginson, 
148, 149. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, described, 97; ac- 
count of, 131, 321; later impression of, 
309, 310. 

Bentzon, Madame Th. (Mme. Blanc), 
writes A Typical American, 386, 387. 

Bernhardt, Sarah, Higginson first sees, 342, 
343- 

Besant, Mrs. Annie, trial of, 329, 330. 

Bigelow, Mrs. Ella H., edits sonnets with 
Higginson, 319. 

Blanc, Louis, 340. 

Book and Heart, 386, 421. 

Boston Authors' Club, 31S. 39i, 399. 

Boston Radical Club, 267, 268. 

Bradlaugh, Charles, Higginson hears, 324; 
and Besant trial, 330. 

Bridgman, Laura, account of, 97. 

Brook Farm, described, 49. 

Brown, Rev. Antoinette, 134, 135. 

Brown, John, 204; Higginson first meets, 
190; plans postponed, 191-93; imprison- 
ment, 193; attempt to secure counsel for, 
193, 194; "John Brown Collection of Let- 
ters," 194; proposed rescue of, 194; A Visit 



to John Brown's Household, 194, 195, 
408; revenge for, 195, 196; farewell and 
death, 196 ; Higginson on affair of, 199, 
200. 

Brown, Theophilus, and T. W. Higginson, 
118. 

Browning, Miss (sister of poet), account 
of, 355. 356. 

Browning, Robert (the poet), 80; Higgin- 
son meets, 334. 335; account of, 356, 357- 

Browning, Robert (son of poet), described, 
356. 

Bryce, James, and Higginson, 325. 

Burlingame, Anson, on Higginson's speech 
in Sim's case, 113. 

Burns, Anthony, a fugitive slave, affair of, 
142-46. 

Butler, General Benjamin, opposition to 
statue of, 394- 

Butman, A. O., 177; riot, 149-51. 

Cambridge, Mass., early accounts of, 21, 22, 
27, 29. 

Canterbury, Archbishop of, 328. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 323. 

Carlyle's Laugh, and Other Surprises, 323, 
396, 428. 

Carnegie, Andrew, 284. 

Cary, Alice, 130. 

Cary, Phoebe, 130. 

Chalmers, Thomas, described, 339. 

Channing, Barbara, on rescue of Sims, 112. 

Channing, Ellery, 48; on literary profits, 
5i. 

Channing, Francis (Lord Channing of Well- 
ingborough), reception at, 350. 

Channing, Mary E., engaged to T. W. Hig- 
ginson, 48; T. W. Higginson's letters to, 
50, 57, 73. 75, 83; Higginson dedicates 
journal to, 67 ; and James Freeman Clarke, 
68; marriage, 85. See also Higginson, 
Mary Channing. 

Channing, Rev. W. H., 85. 

Channing, Dr. Walter, 48, 70. 

Charge with Prince Rupert, A, 156, 408. 

Cheerful Yesterdays, 148, 159, 190, 312, 326, 
341, 384, 387, 421-23; work on, 382; Hig- 
ginson's summary of, 387, 388. 

Child, Lydia Maria, 68; Higginson reviews 
book of, 65, 66; his memoir of, 279. 

Clarke, Mrs., daughter of John Bright, 360. 

Clarke, Dr. Edward, 23. 

Clarke, James Freeman, influence of, 68, 85. 

Cleveland, Grover, impression of, 309. 

Coleridge, Lord, and Higginson, 360. 

Coleridge, E. Hartley, and Higginson, 349. 
350. 

Collyer, Dr. Robert, and Higginson, 392, 
393. 



430 



INDEX 



"Conference for Education in the South," 
at Birmingham, Ala., 365, 366. 

Conway, Moncure D., Higginson preaches 
for, 326, 327; at Besant trial, 329. 330; 
parish of, gives present to Higginson, 346, 
347; Convention, 336, 337^ 

Crane, Walter, 340. 

Crawford, Marion, and Higginson, 354, 355. 

Crothers, Rev. Samuel M., officiates at Col- 
onel Higginson 's funeral, 399~40i. 

Cummings, Rev. Edward, 366. 

Curson, Mrs., the^Higginsons live with, 105, 
106. 

Curtin, Gov., and Higginson's plan, 204, 
205. 

Curtis, Daniel, and Higginson, 42, 43. 

Curtis, George William, and anti-slavery, 
142. 

Cushman, Charlotte, described, 130, 131. 

Dall, Mrs. C. H., 141; on "Mademoiselle and 
her Campaigns," 157. 

Dame, Mrs., a Quaker, 255, 258. 

Dana, Richard H., about Higginson, 320. 

Darwin, Charles, account of, 324; visit to, 
334- 

Decoration Day, a poem, 273, 340. 

Descendants of the Reverend Francis Higgin- 
son, 396, 398, 428. 

Devens, Charles, appeal to, in, 112. 

Dickens, Charles, 339; reaction against, 336. 

Dickens, Child Pictures from, 277, 410. 

Dickinson, Emily, Higginson's acquaint- 
ance with, 312, 313; letters and poems of, 
edited, 368, 369. 

Disunion, plan for, i8r, 182. 

Dobell, Sydney, account of, 339. 340. 

Driftwood, Fire, A, 275, 410; Higginson's 
estimate of, 276. 

Durant, Henry F., founder of Wellesley, 24. 

Ellis, Charles Mayo, 112, 113. 

Emerson, George B., asks Higginson to write 
youthful history of United States, 284, 
285; success of history, 286-88. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 68, 129, 193; anec- 
dote about, 87; described, 96, 130; at Anti- 
Slavery meeting, 201; visit to, 266; influ- 
ence of, 270; Concord celebration for, 390. 

Epictelus, 263, 329, 365, 369, 409. 

Faneuil Hall, meetings at, 144. 
Farragut, Admiral, 260, 261. 
Fayal and the Portuguese, 164, 408. 
Fields, James T., 229, 27s. 280; letter to, 277. 
Forbes, Hugh, threatens Brown's plans, 191, 

200. 
Francis, Dr., 78. 
Free Religious Association, 398; Higginson's 

address at, 164; his activity in, 268; similar 

English organization, 336, 337. 
Free Soil Party, 89-91, 115. 
Frothingham, O. B., 78; on Higginson's style, 

156. 
Froude, J. A.. 323. 

Fugitive Slave Law, in, 114, 144, 148. 
Future Life, The, in In After Days, 254, 428. 

"Galatea Collection" founded by Higgin- 
son at Boston Public Library, 284. 
Galton, Francis, and Higginson, 328. 



Garrison, William Lloyd, favors disunion, 
181; estimate of, 202. 

Geary, Gov., 172, 174; account of, 176. 

Gladstone, W. E., Higginson meets, 324. 

Grant, Judge Robert, poem for Col. Higgin- 
son's birthday, 391. 

Grant, Gen. U. S., 264. 

Greeley, Horace, at Syracuse, 133. 

Greene, Henry Copley, 374. 

Greene, W. B., influence of, 72. 

Hale, Edward Everett, 399; and Higginson, 
24, 83; account of, 261; festival for, 387. 

Hamilton, Sir William, described, 339. 

Hardy, Thomas, Higginson meets, 352, 353. 

Harris, Dr. Thaddeus William, 24, 28. 

Harvard University, Stephen Higginson, 
steward of, 8; class of 1841, 23, 24; dress 
regulations, 25; early account of, 29, 30; 
exhibition at, 33, 34; Higginson repre- 
sents, at Winchester, Eng., 360-62. 

Harvard Memorial Biographies, 263, 409, 
410; working on, 275. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, at Concord, 51. 

Hayes, President, and wife visit Newport, 
260. 

Hazlett, Albert, 199. 200; project to rescue, 
196-98. 

Higginson, Anna, sister of T. W. H., 12, 290; 
death of, 381. 

Higginson, Rev. Francis, the Puritan, 1; as 
non-conformist, no. 

Higginson Francis (brother of T. W. H.), 
11, 20. 

Higginson, George, 271; illustrates family 
generosity, 379- 

Hicjrinson, Gen. Sir George Wentworth, at 
"Trooping the colors," 332-34; Higginson 
visits, 350, 351. 

Higginson, Major Henry L., and T. W. H., 
313, 314. 332-34- 

Higginson, Louisa, sister of T. W. H., 11, 12. 

Higginson, Louisa Storrow (mother of T. 
W. H.), character, 5, 6; son's tribute to, 
7, 56; letters to her son, io, 36, 116; ac- 
counts of him, 12, 13, 15, 16; son's letters 
to (early), 18, 19, 35-38, 47, 55, 56, 58-60, 
65, 74, 75, 79-8i; (Newburyport) 87, 91- 
93, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104, 106, 108, no, 
113, 116; (Worcester) 119, 125, 128, 136- 
38, 148, 154, 159, 160, 163-65, 202-04, 
210, 211-13; (Kansas journey) 168, 169, 
171, 172; (war) 216, 222, 226, 228-31, 249, 
250; moves from Kirkland Street, 19. 20; 
moves to Brattleboro, Vt., 47; tribute to 
son, 56; encourages him, 71, 81, 82, 86; 
watchful care of, 90, 148; advice to, 116, 
120; influence of, 120; death, 254. 

Higginson, Louisa Wentworth, daughter of 
T. W. H., birth, 294; death, 295. 

Higginson, Margaret Waldo, second daugh- 
ter of T. W. H., birth of, 298; and her 
father, 300-07, 318-21, 372, 373; his let- 
ters to, 304. 305, 37i; in Italy, 354; in 
London, 359. 360; birthday celebration 
of, 372; marriage, 392. 

Higginson, Mary Channing, new home, 85, 
86; on her husband's philanthropies and 
sermons, 93. 94. 266, 267; husband's let- 
ters to, 133. 144. 161; (Kansas) 167, 171; 
(Penn.) 197, 198; (war) 220, 222, 229, 233- 



INDEX 



43i 



35. 237, 248, 249; goes to Fayal, 163-65; 
on Kansas troubles, 175; moves to New- 
port, 235; invalidism, 255, 256, 287; Aunt 
Jane drawn from, 280; housekeeping, 288, 
289; death, 290, 291. 

Higginson, Stephen, 1st (great-grandfather 
of T. W. H.), account of, 1. 

Higginson, Stephen, 2d (grandfather of T. 
W. H.), career, 1, 2. 

Higginson, Stephen, Life and Times of, 427; 
begun, 392. 

Higginson, Stephen, 3d, father of T. W. H., 
account of, 1, 2, 5; called "Man of Ross," 
2; marriage, 5; hospitality, 6; death, 7, 19; 
and Harvard College, 8, 9; son's verses 
about, 8. 

Higginson, Stephen, brother of T. W. H., 
11, 18. 

Higginson, Thacher, 14, fatal voyage of, 6, 
38; J. R. Lowell's letter to, 14. 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, ancestry, 
1-4; name, 5; and his Aunt Nancy, 5, 6, 
10, 16-18, 57, 77. 87, 122, 129, 146, 147; 
tribute to mother, 7, 56; his father, 7, 8; 
and Phi Beta Kappa, 8, 34, 35; childhood, 
10-20; his home, 12; school, 12, 14, 15; 
his mother about, 12, 13, 15, 16, 56; me- 
thodical habits, 14, 25, 26; and J. R. Low- 
ell, 14,15, 66; early letters of , 16-20, 32, 
37; earliest interest in negroes, 17, 38; 
Old Cambridge, 19, 386; moves from Kirk- 
land St., 19, 20; boyhood, 20-22; amuse- 
ments, 20-22, 27-29, 53; enters Harvard, 
22; appearance, 23; and E. E. Hale, 24, 
83, 261 ; describes college life, 25, 30; fond- 
ness for athletics, 25-27, 61, 77. 138, 139, 
256, 257; interest in natural history, 28; 
birthdays, 30, 65, 125, 276, 297, 300, 316, 
395; susceptibility of, 30, 31; scholarship, 
32, 33; at Harvard exhibitions, 33. 34; and 
his mother, 35, 36, 56, 65, 71, 74, 81, 82, 
86, 90, 108, no, 116, 120, 122, 125, 148, 
2il, 216, 228; visits the South, 37, 38; love 
of books, 39, 122 ; graduates from Harvard, 
39; teacher in Mr. Weld's school, 41-46; 
moves to Jamaica Plain, 41; youthful 
frivolity of, 43-45. 47. 53; private tutor 
in Perkins family, 45-54; engagement, 48; 
publishes first poem, 49, 50; and Samuel 
Johnson, 50, 78, 82, 126; reading, 50-52; 
love of nature, 52, 53, 138-40, 206, 207; 
dislikes teaching, 54; goes back to Cam- 
bridge, 55-57; economy, 55, 70, 85, 86; 
describes new life, 57-59; goes to gymna- 
sium, 59; poverty, 60, 67 ; plan of study, 60; 
and abolition, 60, 61; dislikes restraint, 
61, 67, 68 ; love of study, 62; loneliness, 63; 
uncertainty of future career,63, 64; dreams 
of being a poet, 64, 65; reviews book, 65, 
66; and Mrs. J. R. Lowell, 66, 67; decides 
to study for the ministry, 68, 69; rooms 
in Divinity Hall, 69; visits Niagara, 70; 
student life, 70-74; friendship for Samuel 
Longfellow, 71, 72, 78, 90, in; for W. H. 
Hurlbut, 72, 125-27, 280; for W. B. 
Greene, 72; on rights of women, 73, 92, 
93. 134-38, 141, 266; on Texas question, 
73. 74; leaves Divinity School, 74. 75; re- 
turns to solitary study, 75-78; on dis- 
union, 76; on anti-slavery question, 76, 77, 
93. 103, 129; and Samuel Johnson, 78, 82, 



85, 104; reenters Divinity School, 78-83; 
explains withdrawal, 78, 79; sermons, 81, 
94, 95, 102, 103, 105, 107, 123; family 
anxiety, 82; desire for individuality, 82; 
his address on "Clergy and Reform," 83; 
becomes pastor of a Newburyport Church, 
84, 85 ; marriage, 85; new home, 85, 86; 
parishioners, 86, 87, 94; dislikes forms of 
worship, 87 ; interest in working people, 88; 
and Free Soil Party, 89-91; and temper- 
ance, 91, 92, 116, 310; fondness for chil- 
dren, 94. 95. 120. 121, 257, 272; establishes 
evening school at Newburyport, 95 ; early 
acquaintance with noted persons, 96-100; 
and David Wasson, 100, 101; and F. B, 
Sanborn, 100, 129; on Unitarian gatherings, 
100, 101; doubts fitness for ministry, ioi, 
102; early lectures, 102, 107; resigns from 
Newburyport church, 103, 104; lives at 
Artichoke Alills, 105, 106; preaches in a 
hall, 107; keeps up interest in Newbury- 
port affairs, 107, 108; interest in public li- 
braries, 108, 140; writes editorials, no, 
in; Thalatta, in; and Fugitive Slave 
Law, in, 112; and Sims, 11 2-1 5; becomes 
pastor of Free Church in Worcester, 115, 
116; leaves Newburyport, 117, 118; Wor- 
cester home, 118; preaches own installa- 
tion sermon, 119, 120; his Sunday School, 
120; and Free Church, 121-23; interest 
in Worcester public affairs, 123; fearless- 
ness of, 123, 125, 312; desires great things, 
124, 127; public speaking, 127, 198, 315- 
17; on Thackeray, 128, 129; sense of 
humor, 129; noted visitors to Worcester, 
130-32; on a western lecture trip, 132-34, 
316, 317; Lucy Stone, 134-36; attends her 
wedding, 137; interest in botany, 140; 
and public reforms, 140, 141; bequest to, 
141; and Anthony Burns affair, 142-46; 
court-house incident, 143, 149; describes 
excitement in Worcester, 144, 145; 
preaches sermon Massachusetts in Mourn- 
ing, 146; arrest of, 146-48; trial, 148; 
Butman affair, 149-51; helps slaves, 151- 
54; literary work at Worcester, 155-60; 
Atlantic Essays, 156, 157; A Charge with 
Prince Rupert, 156; Saints and their Bodies, 
156; Woman and the Alphabet, 156, 157; 
Mademoiselle and her Campaigns, 157; 
April Days, 157; My Outdoor Study, 157; 
Thalatta, 159; "Atlantic" dinner, 159, 
160; gives up housekeeping, 160; lectures 
in Maine, 161, 162, 316; visits Mt. Katah- 
din, 161, 162; summer outing, 162, 163; 
asks for colleague in Free Church, 163; 
Fayal, 163-65; Fayal and the Portuguese, 
164; Sympathy of Religions, 164; goes West 
to aid Kansas emigrants, 166-68; returns 
to Worcester, 168, 169; goes to Kansas, 
169; describes Kansas conditions, 169-81; 
and Dr. Seth Rogers, 175-77, 237. 321; 
preaches at Lawrence, 177, 178; in Lea- 
venworth, 178, 179; speaks at Anti-Sla- 
very meeting, 180, 181; favors disunion, 
181, 182; describes St. Louis slave market, 
182-89; first interview with John Brown, 
190; approves his plans, 191; disapproves 
of their postponement, 191-93; aids Brown, 
193, 194; hopes to rescue Brown, 194; visits 
Brown's home, 194, 195; kidnapping plan. 



432 



INDEX 



i95i 196; warned, 196, 197; plan to res- 
cue Brown's companions, 196-98; goes to 
Pennsylvania, 197; writes to Stevens, 198, 
199; on the John Brown affair, 199, 200; 
guards Phillips at Anti-Slavery meetings, 
201-03; scheme for safety of Washington, 
203-05; goes to Harrisburg, 204; studies 
military tactics, 205; anxious to have a 
share in war, 207-09; resigns from Free 
Church, 209, 210; recruiting a regiment, 
210, 211; decides to join the army, 211, 
212; his military company, 213, 214; of- 
fered command of regiment of freed slaves, 
214; accepts, 215; as a commander, 216-18, 
227, 228; camp life, 218-20, 226, 228; say- 
ings of men, 219, 220, 227, 230, 237, 24s, 
246-48; soldiers' pay, 221, 226, 236, 237, 
252; up the St. Mary's, 222, 223; fascina- 
tion of war, 223, 224; regimental wedding, 
224; expedition to Jacksonville, 225, 226; 
at Port Royal, 226-30; Army Life, 227; 
increase in negro regiments, 229; expedi- 
tion up the South Edisto, 230, 231; 
wounded, 230, 231; on furlough, 231; re- 
turns to regimental difficulties, 232, 233; 
impaired health, 234, 237; holiday festiv- 
ities, 235; presented with sword, 236; 
the baby of the regiment, 237, 238; propo- 
sition for brigadier-generalship, 238; at- 
tempted expedition, 239-41; life on advan- 
ced picket, 241, 242, 244, 245; Court Mar- 
tial scene, 243, 244; describes 9th U.S. 
Colored Regiment, 244, 245; chaplain's 
sermon, 245, 246; negro songs, 246; ac- 
count of chaplain, 248 ; retires from army, 
248-250, 251; village named for, 250; 
keeps up interest in his regiment, 250, 251 ; 
writing about war experiences, 251, 252; 
memorial sent to, at regimental reunion, 
252; interest in Newport public affairs, 
253. 254; death of his mother, 254; letters 
to his sisters, 254, 258, 260, 266, 270, 271, 
301, 305; lives in Quaker boarding-house, 
254> 255; and invalid wife, 255, 256; a 
day's work, 255, 256, 277; celebrated per- 
sons at Newport, 258-62; Oldport Days, 
262; charm of military life, 262, 263, 282; 
translates Epictetus, 263; edits Harvard 
Memorial Biographies, 263, 275; as a pub- 
lic speaker, 263-66, 273; visits Whittier, 
266; visits Emerson, 266; and the Boston 
Radical'Club, 267, 268; religious toleration 
of, 268; his " Creed," 268-70; influence of 
Emerson, 270; various honors, 270, 271; 
summers at the "Point," 272, 273; his 
poem Decoration Day, 273; "The Things 
I Miss," 273; elasticity of his nature, 274, 
276, 296; on his own style, 274, 275; Mal- 
bone, 275, 278-82, 289; and Atlantic 
Monthly, 275; Driftwood Fire, 275. 276; 
translates Petrarch, 276-78; compiles 
Child Pictures from Dickens, 277; literary 
work, 277, 279; working on Army Life, 
282; increased reputation, 283; literary 
projects, 283, 284, "Galatea Collection," 
284; writes Young Folks' History, 284, 285; 
success of, 285,286,288; revision, 308, 396; 
money matters, 286-88; housekeeping, 
288, 289; plans European journey, 289, 
290; critical work, 290; death of wife, 290, 
291; marries again, 292; settles in Cam- 



bridge, 292, 294; visits Harper's Ferry, 
292-94; birth and death of first child, 294, 
295; at Plymouth, N.H., 296; A Search 
for the Pleiades, 296; in legislature, 296- 
99; birth of second child, 298; at Cow- 
pens, 299; and his daughter, 300-07, 318- 
21, 372, 373 5 writes Larger History, 301; 
and Matthew Arnold, 301; summers at 
Holden, Mass., 305-07; a week's work, 
307, 308; Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 
307, 308; writes Women and Men, 308; in 
politics, 308-10, 317, 318; company re- 
union, 310; on dreams, 310, 311; Monarch 
of Dreams, 311,312; and Emily Dickinson, 

312, 313; edits her letters and poems, 368, 
369; confused with Maj. Higginson, 

313, 314; love of music, 314; interest in 
many organizations, 314, 315; in public 
affairs, 316, 320; western lecture tour, 
316, 317 ; Afternoon Landscape, 319; state 
historian, 319, 320; summer at East Glou- 
cester, 320, 321; first European journey 
(1872), 322-27; enjoys London, 322, 323, 
326, 327; meets eminent persons, 322-27; 
visits Oxford, 325, 326; second visit to Eu- 
rope (1878), 327-46; meets eminent per- 
sons, 328-37, 340; at Besant trial, 329. 
330; attends public meetings, 330, 331; 
visits Edwin Arnold, 331, 332; Gen. Hig- 
ginson, 332-34; and Darwin, 334; Eng- 
lish Liberal Thinkers, 336, 337; in Oxford, 
337. 338; in Scotland, 338-40; returns to 
London, 340; at Paris, 340-43; in Nor- 
mandy, 343; on the Rhine, 343~45 ; at 
Frankfort, 345, 346; at Nuremberg and 
Dresden, 346; on foreign travel, 346; jour- 
ney to Europe (1897), 347~53; in London, 
347-51; Horder's description of, 348, 349; 
visits at country houses, 350, 351; at Ox- 
ford, 351; at Stratford, 351, 352; at Salis- 
bury, 352, 353! at Paris, 353; in Switzer- 
land, 3535 journey to Europe <i90i), 353- 
62; impressions of Granada, 353; at Cas- 
tellamare, 353, 354; illness of his daugh- 
ter, 354; at Capri, 355; at Florence, 355- 
57; in England, 357~59; in London, 359, 
360; at the Winchester celebration, 360- 
62; revisits the South (1878), 362-64; an- 
other visit to the South (1904), 364-66; 
and colored people at Boston, 366-67; 
visits Gettysburg, 370, 371; summers in 
Dublin, N.H., 371-76; and Mark Twain, 
373, 374; verses for Smith outdoor theatre, 
374; and Dublin village life, 374, 375; de- 
sires to be Harvard's oldest graduate, 376, 
398; interest in students, 376, 377; receives 
degrees, 377, 378; kindliness of, 378, 379? 
at polls, 380; death of sister, 381; at Co- 
lumbus celebration, 381 ; seventieth birth- 
day, 381; lectures at Western Reserve, 
382; illness, 382-84; gives away books, 
384, 385; renewed activity, 385, 386, 392; 
book about, 386, 387; Cheerful Yesterdays, 
382; and Shaw monument, 388; musical 
poems, 388, 389; lectures before Lowell 
Institute, 389; 390; at Emerson celebra- 
tion, 390; eightieth birthday celebration, 
391; sons of Veterans Post named for, 
391; at work on Stephen Higginson and 
Part of a Man's Life, 392 ; Robert Collyer, 
392, 393; and church organization, 393» 



INDEX 



433 



394; activity, 394; delight in grandchil- 
dren, 394, 395 ; gradual withdrawal from 
active life, 395-99; Carlyle's Laugh and 
Descendants of the Reverend Francis 
Higginson, 396; interested in Simplified 
Spelling, 398; and socialism, 398, 399; 
death, 399; farewell services, 399-401. 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, Post Sons 
of Veterans, 391. 400. 

Higginson, Waldo, brother of T. W. H., ac- 
count of, 11, 14, 40; letter about Mr. 
Wells, 15. 

Hoar, Senator George F., and Higginson's 
hymn, 64; at Emerson celebration, 390. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, conversation with, 
159, 160. 

Hopper, Edward, 135- 

Hopper, Isaac, 135. 

Horder, Rev. W. Garrett, describes Higgin- 
son, 348, 349, 362; preaches memorial 
sermon, 349- 

Houghton, Lord, 328. 

Houghton, Rowena, wife of village black- 
smith, 8. 

Howe, Julia Ward, 93; at Newport, 258; 
and Higginson, 315; at Paris, 342. 

Howe, Dr. Samuel Gridley, 26, 113, 193, 204; 
and John Brown's plans, 192. 

Hugo, Victor, 340, 353- 

Hunt, Helen, at Newport, 258, 259. See also 
Jackson, Helen Hunt. 

Hunter, Gen., and black regiment, 221, 
225. 

Hurlbut, W. H., 85; Higginson's friendship, 
for, 72, 125-27; portrayed in Malbone, 
280. 

Huxley, T. H., 335i 340 ; Higginson meets, 
324. 

Jackson, Rev. A. W., on Higginson and his 
black regiment, 216-18, 223. 

Jackson, Helen Hunt, literary success, 258, 
259. 

Johnson, Rev. Samuel, 50, 101; and Higgin- 
son, 78, 82; letter to, about resignation, 
104, 105. 

Kansas, troubles in, 166, 167, 180, 181; 

Higginson in, 169-80; people of, 174-77. 
Kidner, Rev. Reuben, and Higginson, 358, 

359, 375. 376. 
Kossuth, described, 97, 98. 

La Farge, John, described, 259. 

Lane, Gen. Jim, 172, 174. 

Larger History of the United States, 417, 427: 

Higginson at work on, 301. 
Le Barnes, J. W., on kidnapping project, 

196. 
Leighton, Caroline Andrews, letter to, 154. 
Leighton, Celia, account of, 109. See also 

Thaxter, Celia. 
Lind, Jenny, account of, 99, 100. 
Littlefield, Col., on colored troops, 229. 
Livermore, Mrs. Mary A., in London, 340. 
Livingstone, David, 341, 342. 
Long, Governor John D., and Higginson, 296, 

299. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 26, 37, 50; visit from, 

295- 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 386, 424. 



Longfellow, Mrs. Henry Wadsworth, 50; 
Higginson's impression of, 72. 

Longfellow, Samuel, and T. W. Higginson, 
71, 72, 78, 90, 114; Thalatta, 111, 159. 

Lowell, James Russell, 156; first impression 
of, 14, 15; literary earnings of, 66; Swin- 
burne on, 336. 

Lowell, Maria White, Higginson's impres- 
sions of, 66, 67. 

Lowell Institute, Higginson lectures before 
on "American Orators and Oratory," 
389; on "American Literature," 389; on 
"English Literature," 390. 

Lyttleton, Lord, and Higginson, 324. 

McCarthy, Justin, Higginson visits, 336. 
McCarthy, Mrs. Justin, described, 336. 
McKinley, President, death of, 361. 
Mademoiselle and her Campaigns, 157, 407. 
Maine, Sir Henry, 328. 
Malbone, 289, 411, 423; beginning of, 275, 

278; writing, 279-81, published, 281, 282. 
Manning, Cardinal, account of, 328, 329. 
Marguerite, Queen of Italy, Higginson's 

Sonnets of Petrarch sent to, 278. 
Marks, Lionel, poem on engagement of, 388, 

389. 
Martineau, James, reception at, 329. 
Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during 

the War of 1861-65, 386, 421. 
Massachusetts in Mourning, 146, 406. 
Masson, Prof, and Higginson, 328; dines 

with, 339, 340. 
May, Rev. Samuel, Jr., letter to, about 

anti-slavery excitement, 144, 145; and 

fugitive slaves, 152. 
Medici, Marchesa Peruzzi de, daughter of 

Story, visit to, 355-57- 
Michigan University, influence of Higgin- 
son's writings on, 157. 
Miller, Joaquin, 336. 
Monarch of Dreams, 417, 423; account of, 

311. 312. 
Montgomery, Capt. James, leader of rescue 

party, 197, 198, 200; plan to recall, 203. 
Moore, Thomas, visits to birthplace of, 

322. 
Mott, Lucretia, described, 135, 136. 
Mount Auburn, early, 18, 21, 22. 
Muller, Max, account of, 328. 
Miinthe, Dr., 354. 
My Outdoor Study, 157, 408. 

Negroes, Higginson's early interest in, 17, 
38; Underground Railroad, 151-54; St. 
Louis slave market described, 182^89; 
regiment of freed, 216-51; discipline in, 
217, 218, 226, 227; sayings of, 219, 220, 
227, 230, 237, 245, 246; barbecue, 235: 
religious differences described, 244; de- 
scription of, 246-48; question of, in New- 
port, 253, 254; Higginson's address to, at 
Alabama, 366; at Boston, 366, 367. 

Newburyport, Mass., evening schools in, 95, 
107; pro-slavery sentiment in, 103; re- 
solutions concerning departure of Higgin- 
son from, 117. 

Newman, F. W., 334. 

North, Christopher, described, 339. 

Norton, Charles Eliot, and Higginson fam- 
ily, 6. 



434 



INDEX 



Ogden, Robert, his educational trip, 364-66. 

Old Cambridge, 19, 386, 423. 

Oldport Days, 262, 412. 

Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, Higginson writes 

about, 279; memorial meeting for, 397. 
Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 279, 307, 308, 416. 
Outdoor Papers, 217, 313, 409. 

Parker, Francis E., 33, 58; describes Higgin- 
son, 23; Higginson's letters to, 32, 37, 4i- 

Parker, Theodore, 148; encourages Higgin- 
son, 83; influence of, 90, 115; and John 
Brown's plans, 191. 

Part of a Man's Life, 426; work on, 392. 

Pattison, Dr. Mark, 340; and Higginson, 
337. 338. 

Peabody, Josephine Preston, Higginson 
writes poem to, 388, 389. 

Pedro, Dom, of Brazil, account of, 261, 262. 

Perkins, Stephen H., Higginson becomes 
tutor in family of, 45~54- 

Petrarch, Fifteen Sonnets of, 278, 425. 

Phillips, Wendell, 113, 132; impression of 
Higginson, 96; and Burns affair, 142; fa- 
vors disunion, 181; Anti-Slavery speeches 
at Music Hall, 201-03. 

Phillips, Mrs. Wendell, on Sims case, 112. 

Porter, Admiral, 260, 261. 

Pratt, Dexter, Longfellow's village black- 
smith, 8. 

Prescott, Harriet, letters of Higginson to, 
S3, 122, 130, 157, 181; describes Higginson, 
95, 96; receives literary prize, 107, 108. 

Quakers, described, 135. 255. 
Quincy, President Josiah (of Harvard Col- 
lege), 90; and students, 29, 30, 32, 33. 36. 

Radcliffe College, 20, 377. 

Rawnsley, Canon, 358. 

Redpath, James, 176; warns Higginson, 196, 

197. 
Ride through Kansas, A, 169, 173, 407. 
Robinson, Gov., 176. 
Rogers, Dr. Seth, letters to, 175-77, 232, 

233. 239-41, 250, 263; becomes surgeon 

in colored regiment, 216; and Higginson, 

237, 282, 321. 
Rosebery, Earl of, account of, 330, 362. 
Round Table Club, 315. 

St. Louis, Mo., slave-market in, 182-89. 
Saints and their Bodies, 156, 407. 
Sanborn, F. B., 190; and T. W. Higginson, 

100; described, 129; seeks aid for Brown, 

192. 193. 
Sargent, Dr. D. A., 156. 
Sargent, J. T., Radical Club meets at home 

of, 267. 
Saxton, Gen. Rufus, offers command of 

black regiment to Higginson, 214; offer 

accepted, 215; and Higginson, 217, 248; 

and battle of Olustee, 241. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 339. 
Search for the Pleiades, A, 296, 415. 
Sewall, S. E., 193. 

Sharp, Professor, account of, 338, 339. 
Shaw, Robert Gould, Higginson writes verse 

about monument to, 388. 
Sims, Thomas, 142; the fugitive slave, 112- 

15. 



Sixty and Six, a poem, 301. 

Smith, Joseph Lindon, 372; his outdoor 

theatre, 374. 
Smith College, influence of Higginson's writ- 
ings on, 156, 157. 
Somerset, Lady Henry, account of, 315. 
Soule, Silas, gains admission to prison, 198. 
Spenser, Herbert, account of, 335, 336. 
Spofford, Harriet Prescott. See Prescott, 

Harriet. 
Spooner, Lysander, kidnapping project, 195, 

196. 
Stanley, Dean, described, 325. 
Stanley, Henry M., account of, 341. 342. 
Stevens, A. D., 199, 200; project to rescue, 

196-98; Higginson's letter to, 198, 199. 
Stewart, Capt., of Kansas, 151. 
Stone, Lucy, described, 97; Higginson's 

friendship with, 134-36; marries Henry 

Blackwell, 137. 
Storrow, Anne (Aunt Nancy), account of, 

5, 6; and T. W. Higginson, 10, 11, 122; 

T. W. Higginson's letters to, 16-18, 57, 

77. 87, 129, 146, 147. 
Storrow, Mrs. Anne Appleton, life of, 3-5. 
Storrow, Farley, 28, 37. 
Storrow, Louisa, birth, 5; marries Stephen 

Higginson, 5- See also Higginson, Louisa 

Storrow. 
Storrow, Capt. Thomas, of the British army, 

2; sketch of, 3, 4. 
Storrow, Thomas Wentworth, uncle of T. 

W. H., his namesake, 5. 
Story, Judge, 35, 116. 
Story, W. W., the sculptor, 355. 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, in, 159. 
Stowell, Martin, party led by, 168. 
Sumner, Charles, 38, 166, 238; described, 

96, 97; buys and frees negro family, 153. 
Sunshine and Petrarch, 276-78, 410. 
Swanwich, Anna, 334. 

Swinburne, A. C, on Lowell, 336; Higgin- 
son visits, 359, 360. 
Sympathy of Religions, 164, 328, 411. 

Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the At- 
lantic, 386, 422. 

Taylor, Helen, 340. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 357; account of, 326. 

Thackeray, Miss, and Higginson, 326. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, Higginson 
describes, 128, 129. 

Thalatta, 159, 405. 

Thaxter, Celia (Leigh ton), account of, 109. 

Thaxter, Levi, 45, 57 ; friendship for Higgin- 
son, 23; and Isles of Shoals, 108, 109; the 
Higginsons on, 109. 

Thayer, Abbot, at Dublin, 373. 

Things I Miss, The, a poem, account of, 
273. 

Thoreau, Henry D., 129, 139; account of, 
98. 

Todd, Mabel Loomis, edits poems of Emily 
Dickinson, 368, 369. 

Topeka, Kan., letter from, 172, 173; account 
of, 175, 176. 

Travellers and Outlaws, 319, 418. 

Tubman, Harriet, 219. 

Twain, Mark, account of, 259, 260, 373. 374- 

Tyndall, John, 335; Higginson hears, 324; 
letter from, 327. 



INDEX 



435 



Underwood, F. H., and Atlantic, 155; Hig- 

ginson's protest to, 158. 
Up the St. Mary's, 251, 409. 

Vere, Aubrey de, Higginson on, 323. 
Voltaire, Centenary, 340; birthplace, 341 • 

Walker, Brig.-Gen., and Higginson, 227, 
228. 

Ward, Julia, 26. See also Howe, Julia Ward. 

Ware, Thornton, 17, 18. 

Washington, Booker, school, 365; and north- 
ern colored people, 366. 

Washington, D.C., plan for safety of, 203- 
05. 

Wasson, David, and T. W. Higginson, 100, 
101. 

Webb, R. D., Higginson visits, 322. 

Weiss, Rev. Mr., 267. 

Weld, Samuel, Higginson teaches in school 
of, 41-46. 

Wells, William, his school, 14, 15. 

Wentworth, Sir John, 4. 

Wentworth, John, Governor of New Hamp- 
shire, 3- 

Western Reserve University, confers degree 
on Col. Higginson, 377 ; Higginson lectures 
at, 382. 

Whitman, Walt, 336; Higginson quotes, 395- 



Whittier, John Greenleaf, 336; Higginson 

visits, 98, 266; described, 259. 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 424; Higginson at 

work on, 386. 
Williams, Henry, 233. 
Wilson, John. See North, Christopher. 
Woman and the Alphabet, or Ought Women 

to learn the Alphabet? 407; inquiry about, 

156; influence of, 156, 157. 
Women and Men, 308, 418. 
Woman Who Most Influenced Me, The, 7, 

421. 
Woman's Suffrage, rights of women, 73, 92, 

93, 137. 138, 141; convention, 134-36, 

266; Bill, 296, 297; in England, 331, 

340. 
Worcester, Free Church at, 115, 121-23; 

people of, 118, 119; free public library at, 

140. 
Worden, Capt., 260, 261. 
Wordsworth, William, home of, described, 

357, 358. 
Wordsworth, William, grandson of poet, 

357; Higginson visits, 355. 

Young Folks' History of the United States, 
365, 413, 415; Higginson asked to write, 
284; work on, 285; great success of, 285, 
286, 288; revision, 308, 396. 



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